Haringey | Maternal Mental Health Alliance

.By Susie Lingwood, Liaison Psychiatrist, North Middlesex University Hospital

Susie Lingwood is a Liaison Psychiatrist in north London. The Mums and Babies in Mind team are working with Susie and her colleagues to improve perinatal mental health services in Haringey and the surrounding boroughs. In this blog Susie explains what her role involves, what she has done to improve services and how mums with perinatal mental health problems and their babies are being supported locally.

I work as a Liaison Psychiatrist in the Mental Health Liaison Service at the North Middlesex University Hospital in north London. This isn’t a specific perinatal mental health role, but involves liaising between psychiatry and maternity (and other services). Barnet, Enfield and Haringey (BEH) Mental Health NHS Trust provide the hospital with the service. Our boroughs are currently rated red on the Maternal Mental Health Alliance map as there is no Specialist Perinatal Mental Health service but in October 2016 we were successful in receiving funding from NHS England to develop a specialist team here and I am looking forward to being involved in its development.

Continue reading The role of a Liaison Psychiatrist in perinatal mental health →

julie-juliff2 By Julie Juliff, Head of Maternity Services for Haringey Clinical Commissioning Group

Julie Juliff is Head of Maternity Services for Haringey Clinical Commissioning Group. Mums and Babies in Mind is working with leaders from across services in Haringey to support their work to ensure mums and babies in the perinatal period are given a high level of care. Here Julie talks about the importance of developing a strategy for perinatal mental health services, how she went about doing this and how other leaders can follow in her footsteps.

If a woman needs specialist perinatal mental health services in Haringey, Enfield or Barnet it is currently a postcode lottery of home address and choice of birth location as to whether she will receive this care. For women, their partners and families it is difficult to access appropriate mental health care in our area. In order to improve this it is essential that there is local agreement in how services should be commissioned, designed and delivered. Commissioners we have been working with in Haringey, Enfield and Barnet have identified that this local agreement needs to be one of our priority areas but have also expressed a concern that they might not be able to identify funds to provide these essential services.

Continue reading Developing a perinatal mental health strategy →