Guest blog by Louse Harrington, Development and Impact Manager at the NSPCC

 

Up to one in five mums and one in 10 dads experience perinatal mental health problems (Bauer, 2016 and NHS England, 2018). However, access to the right support at the right time isn’t guaranteed and the pandemic has exacerbated things. During the last year, for many expectant parents, government restrictions have meant being away from supportive family and friends, dealing with new pressures, and uncertainty around birth arrangements. For some, this combination of challenges has intensified feelings of stress, anxiety and apprehension.

Through NSPCC’s Fight for a Fair Start campaign we’ve been calling on governments across the UK to ensure training and resources to spot perinatal mental health problems are available so parents can receive the support they need, at the earliest opportunity, for themselves and their babies. And where parents need specialist care and support, the NSPCC want governments to ensure it’s available to them, wherever they live.

To support improvements to early help on offer to parents, we’re sharing what we’ve learnt from adapting our preventative mental health service, Pregnancy in Mind, to virtual delivery, enabling us to still be here for families when they need us most. Continue reading Making remote services work: what NSPCC learnt from providing support to expectant parents during the pandemic →