Perinatal Faculty Newsletter - Winter 2024

Message from the Chair

Dear Members,

As ever, this is a packed newsletter bursting with useful information. I am also writing to let you know that this is my last newsletter as Chair.

We are in the process of co-opting a new Chair, which will be followed by a formal call for Statements of Interest in the role this summer. I will move to the role of Past Chair to ensure a smooth transition and continuity in our work.

It has been a privilege to chair the Faculty over the past 3½ years, which has been a time of ongoing change. I know that together the Faculty will be able to continue to provide specialist leadership to the field and support ongoing developments across all the UK nations.  

We are still seeking new committee members to represent Northern Ireland and Wales. Please contact ([email protected]) if you are interested or would like to find out more about the role.

The Faculty were busy at the end of last year with a number of successful events.

We held a webinar on 2nd of October entitled Holding a Systemic Lens in the Perinatal Period: Clinical Considerations in the use of Family Therapy and Behavioural Couples Therapy.

86 people registered and it seemed that the topic could have warranted more time. Many thanks to the speakers who contributed to this event including Julie Fraser, Marion Cuddy, Radha Yagnik and Belen Duran. 

We were very pleased to join with the Point of Care Foundation who facilitated our first Faculty Schwartz Round entitled Perinatal Psychology: When Personal and Professional Collide.

These are reflective events that focus on the emotional impact of professional roles and support staff wellbeing.

The Schwartz Round was provided free of charge to Faculty members as a benefit of membership. It generated very positive feedback and we will aim to run another one this year. Please contact us if you have any suggestions for a theme for the next round.

In terms of publications, the Faculty has now published a Position Statement on the Delivery of Psychologically Informed Care and Psychological Therapies in Maternity Services, which is available on the resources tab of the Faculty website. Please share widely with your networks.

Work on other Faculty publications continues. The Position Statement on Psychological Care for 0-5s involves a large working group across DCP Faculties and is making good progress. The Perinatal Psychological Therapies decision guide is still in progress.

The Maternal Mental Health Alliance and the BPS Perinatal Faculty are working together to map Maternal Mental Health Service (MMHS) provision across England, which will be used to inform a published briefing.

It is vital that we build a clear picture of provision across the country, including any gaps and variation in funding levels so that we can campaign effectively for equal access to services for women and birthing people across the UK, as well as giving you information to support local commissioning discussions and enabling services to share learning and expertise more efficiently as they develop.

Please help us by completing this survey about your MMHS. If you have any questions, please email [email protected].

We are pleased to see that The All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on birth trauma in the UK Parliament has launched an inquiry to investigate factors underlying traumatic birth and to develop policy recommendations to reduce and prevent birth trauma.

The closing date for submissions for the call for evidence is the 20th of February 2024. We thank Sarah Finnis for submitting a statement on behalf of the Faculty.

Finally, we have all been very concerned about events in the Middle East and the impact of the conflict, particularly the impact this is having for women, children, and families.

The BPS has issued a statement which you can find here: BPS statement on conflict in the Middle East | BPS,

Messages from your representatives:

England

• All areas of England should have a Perinatal Pelvic Health Service by March 2024. A National Service Specification and associated implementation guide has been published. The guidance includes service standards, resources for implementation, and good practices examples. 
• NHS England has published guidance for GPs around how they can fulfil their contractual requirement to ask about mental health in the 6-8 week postnatal consultation. Read the full guidance here.
• A series of excellent webinars have been conducted via NHS England, including one focused on addressing health inequalities as part of expanding specialist PMH services. See the Future Collaboration Platform to access this and other recent webinars.
• NHS England, Workforce Training and Education Directorate (formally Health Education England) has published a Perinatal Mental Health Workforce Census.
  • Findings from the census indicate that psychological professionals are the second largest staff group in specialist PMH services (17%) after nursing staff (31%). Since March 2019 and the implementation of the NHS Long Term Plan, the number of psychological professions has increased by over 280% in community teams. Looking at clinical psychology in more detail - 22% of the workforce are employed at Band 7, with 45% Band 8a and 22% Band 8b. A small proportion were Band 8c (6%) or a Consultant (2%).
  • The psychological professions workforce has the second lowest sickness rate (2.3%) across PMH services, and it is lower than the PMH staff wide sickness rate of 5% and the NHS wide reported rate of 5%.
  • The vacancy rate for psychological professions was found to be 21% (compared with  22% for nurses and 29% for peer support workers in PMH services). It is more than twice as high as the NHS wide vacancy rate for all staff of 8%. However, it is very likely to reflect the ongoing expansion of Maternal Mental Health Services that have not yet filled all their psychology posts.
• After a competitive selection process we are delighted that a member of the Perinatal Faculty has been allocated a place on the National Maternity and Neonatal Stakeholder Council that is being newly chaired by Dr Clea Harmer (SANDS CEO), which will be a vital opportunity to influence the maternity and neonatal transformation programme.

Scotland

• The Scottish Government indicative funding for perinatal mental health, infant mental health and MNPI in 23-24 has now been confirmed. The Scottish Perinatal Psychologists Specialist Interest Group (SPPIG) is currently gathering information on each health board's funding allocation.
• The national clinic audit dataset – Powerapp – is now being rolled out to other Health Boards, following initial pilot sites (GGC and Grampian). Data summaries are compiled every quarter. This covers perinatal mental health services and MNPI services.

Wales

• Recruitment is underway for Maternal Mental Health Services in two Health Boards (Betsi Cadwaladr and Cardiff and Vale UHB).
• An economic report has been published by Traumatic Stress Wales highlighting the short and long-term impact of untreated birth trauma in Wales. This has been shared with Welsh Government.
• The specialist perinatal community mental health services across Wales are progressing to meet PQN standards. The aim is for every service to be meeting the standards within the next two years.

Northern Ireland     

• Perinatal Psychologists in NI are keen to connect to share practice and support developments. If you are interested in connecting with others, please look out for future networking opportunities. A face-to-face networking event will be held in March.
• Dr Geraldine Scott Hayes and Dr Andrew Lok are reviewing the perinatal care pathway to ensure that the needs of parents with mild-moderate concerns are considered in terms of access to psychological therapies.

Neonatal Update

• A support pack has been produced to guide clinicians in supporting staff and parents following difficult events. Please help to shape this resource by providing any feedback (Google Form for feedback is included).
• NeoLeaP have created a series of e-learning modules to support clinicians in their work with staff and parents on neonatal units. There are 4 modules (Psychologically-informed Neonatal Care; Infant Well-being; Family Well-being; Staff Well-being). You can read more about it here and access the e-learning here.
• NeoLeaP are hosting an inaugural conference in June 2024 in Birmingham. See details here.

Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) Update

We encourage all Faculty members to update their equality, diversity and inclusion data as part of their BPS account, to allow us to understand how representative we are as a faculty and to monitor efforts to address gaps in representation. Following our last newsletter, we have had a slight improvement in completion rate, but there are still many members without these details.  

Please help us by logging into your BPS account and click my BPS. One of the tiles is titled 'equality data.' When you click on the tile you will be asked to complete a number of drop-down questions, asking for details about ethnicity, gender, disability and other relevant factors. It takes approximately five minutes to complete.

Completion is voluntary and your data will be treated in the strictest confidence in line with the UK General Data Protection Regulation 2021, Data Protection Act 2018 and Equality Act 2010.

Something to Read:

Dr Karen Gurney, Clinical Psychologist and psychosexual therapist has written a new book How Not to Let Having Kids Ruin Your Sex Life: Navigating the Parenting Years with Your Relationship Intact.

It focuses on the changes that arise in our intimate lives when parenting, including sections on communication and how to create opportunities for intimacy in the chaos and pressures of family life (including when sleep deprived!).

Something to Watch or Listen to

A podcast conversation with 3 female Black Clinical Psychologists who hold senior leadership roles within the NHS and in higher education.

Listen for an inspiring discussion on their lives and careers, to celebrate Black History Month 2023. https://www.bps.org.uk/news/saluting-our-sisters

Something to Learn

The South East Clinical Network has published an accessible and engaging video about the impact of trauma (and intergenerational trauma) on women and their babies in the perinatal period. It is a valuable resource for teaching and training. You can find the video here.

NHS England has recently released a New Trauma Informed Care e-learning programme to help learners recognise and sensitively respond to people who have experienced trauma. For more information and to access the resource, please visit the Trauma Informed Care programme page.

Something to Do

Participants needed for a new Study to inform the development of a Perinatal Loss Measure.

If you are a professional who has worked with mothers and birthing people following baby loss we would like your help!

We would like to invite you to join us for a focus group to input into the conversation around creating the questionnaire and to hear your experiences of what is important to ask bereaved mothers and birthing people!.

Two time slots for focus groups will be offered on Microsoft Teams on 15th March 2024 11am-12pm OR 2-3pm. Please contact Vienna Rose on [email protected] to express your interest or find out more.

(part of Clinical Psychology Doctoral research with University of Leicester, ethics approval: 42573-vr107-ls)

Sign up for NHS England's upcoming webinar on supporting mental healthcare in maternity and neonatal settings taking place on 11 March 2024 2:00pm – 4:00pm. There will be a specific focus on the Good Practice Guide.

The Schema Therapy School are hosting a Two-Day workshop 'Schema-Informed CBT for Perinatal Complexity: A Masterclass in Formulation and Experiential Skills'.

The workshop will be facilitated by Dr Catherine Green and Dr Helen Startup and take place virtually on the 13th and 14th of June 2024. £290 for two day training, with a 10% discount if booked before 1st of April 2024. To find out more, please email [email protected] and use reference code PERI24.

Helpful Resources

Psychology Tools has made some of their resources freely available to help those affected by the Israel-Gaza conflict:

• https://www.psychologytools.com/articles/free-hebrew-and-arabic-translations-of-trauma-and-ptsd-psychoeducational-resources/

New guidance has been published by RCPsych on:

• Delivering greener, more sustainable and net zero mental health care: Guidance and recommendations

New publications

• Ayers, S., Coates, R., Sinesi, A., Cheyne, H., Maxwell, M., Best, C., ... & MAP Study Team. (2024). Assessment of perinatal anxiety: diagnostic accuracy of five measures. The British Journal of Psychiatry, 1-7.
• Horsch, A., Garthus-Niegel, S., Ayers, S., Chandra, P., Hartmann, K., Vaisbuch, E., & Lalor, J. (2024). Childbirth-related posttraumatic stress disorder: definition, risk factors, pathophysiology, diagnosis, prevention, and treatment. American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology.
• O'Brien, J., Gregg, L., & Wittkowski, A. (2023). A systematic review of clinical psychological guidance for perinatal mental health.

Calendar of Events

Save the Date! We are looking forward to holding an in-person 'Unconference' on 1st of October 2024. Please look out for further updates about line-up of speakers and to sign up!