Decision details

The Health Visiting Service have piloted the use of a Me and My Baby (MaMB) tool to assess the mother-baby relationship and identify where additional support may be needed. They have found that a proportion of new parents would benefit from additional support below the specialist level of care provided by the existing perinatal mental health service. The Health Visiting service are ideally positioned to identify families where perinatal mental health needs are unmet though the utilisation of specialist public health nursing skills and the 5 mandated health checks they are contracted to carry out for all new parents in Doncaster.

The decision has been taken to invest £80,000 of the recently awarded ‘Prevention and Promotion for Better Mental Health Fund 2021/22’ monies into the existing Health visiting service offer to meet the unmet need of new parents suffering with mild to moderate perinatal mental health issues that do not meet the threshold for existing specialist perinatal mental health services. This will be directed towards dedicated Health Visitor time to deliver support in addition to the current healthy child programme. Designated Health Visitors with training and an interest in perinatal mental health will work one to one with families with mild to moderate perinatal mental health needs using strengths based approaches.

No alternative options were considered.