From My letter to Matt Hancock: 22nd August 2019:
“In 2007 NICE Guidelines recommended implementations which the E.K.C.C.G. has retrospectively now gained in 2019, and has been allocated £251k yearly for their Wave 1 funding for Specialist Perinatal Services, estimated by NHSE to be 75% of what is needed to meet national standards of care. The CCG have yet to complete the long term plan for this and have said they are currently using the funds for mental health intervention staff and service
This level of staff are expensive to fund, as an approximate example a Specialist Perinatal Mental Health Midwife £35k annually and Consultant Psychiatrist £250-£300 an hour.
For continuity between these and base level support they say they have supplied a social worker and nursery nurses (settings not specified) and MIMHS are seeing 3 times more women in community settings. However, when self referral to MIMHS is made it is difficult to cope with by telephone assessment, and leads to a waiting of about 6 weeks for implementations which for traumatised struggling mothers is torture. I have heard of single first time mothers left in dire straights while threatening to harm their baby and…. what happens to those not identified or in self referral? With respite and early help this can be avoided.
The reality is far removed from these guidelines and declarations of recent improvements to psychiatric interventions.
The CCG say the 8 MBU beds only recently opened in September 2018, cover Kent. This not the case, when in fact it serves the 4.5,000,000 population of Kent, Sussex and Surrey.. E.Kent alone has 8,000 births a year

Currently in 2019 Post Natally by:

a) Midwife or Maternity Support Auxilliary Worker.:
Midwife 2-3 visits – home visit the day after hospital release and day 5 for baby weight. Day10 visit optional; can be at home or clinic if all is well. Only continues to 28 days at request of mother including ref’s from GP or Health Visitor (HV) .

b) HV at home at: 2 weeks, 6 weeks, Then in clinic at 1 year……..(then outside of perinatal period 2 ½ years).
They have to be accessed through clinic and have a Duty Line from which they can phone back with suggestions.

c) When problems persist: SpoA through CMHT (mental health service) GP, or self refer to MIMHS, Psychiatric intervention in ; medication, counselling
This largely depends on the mother accessing these medical personnel herself.
There are just 2 part time Psychiatric trained Midwives for the EKent birthing population of 8,000, as an intermediary specialist service.
Again this begs for the support to go to the mother, baby , father and siblings before serious problems set in whether from physical, mental ill health or a combination