5th October 2016
London Perinatal Mental Health Network
We are thrilled to announce the continuation of our fantastic partnership working with the London Perinatal Mental Health Network.
Following on from our earlier pilot training programme for 22 champions during early 2015 in the London Boroughs of Barnet, Enfield and Haringey, this week sees the start of the roll-out of a further 68 Multi-agency Perinatal Mental Health Champions receiving training provided by the Institute of Health Visiting, with practitioners drawn from both maternity and multi-agency backgrounds.
Jo Maitland, London Perinatal Mental Health Network Coordinator, and her team have recruited over 40 new multi-agency participants and more than 20 participants from maternity backgrounds as Perinatal Champions for this new training commission.
Throughout October, we will be delivering three two-day training events of our newly-updated Multi-agency Perinatal Mental Health Champions training programme. The programme has been designed to equip champions to provide awareness training, cascading information in pairs to cohorts of multi-agency colleagues via a flexible onward-cascade of half and one day awareness training sessions as part of the network’s wider plan.
This will help ensure that all practitioners involved in the care of women during the perinatal period have the skills and knowledge to recognise, detect and support perinatal mental health problems, in recognition that multi-agency working is central to providing coordinated care during the perinatal period and is crucial to better outcomes for women and their families.
The London Perinatal Mental Health Network’s objective for their Champions mirrors the Institute of Health Visiting’s own aim in the development of the role, that Perinatal Mental Health Champions are:
- ambassadors for perinatal mental health within their local area;
- involved in developing integrated perinatal mental health care pathways;
- act as a central resource to colleagues;
- empower colleagues to raise parity of esteem for perinatal mental health;
- and promote evidence-based practice at all levels.
The training has been funded by Health Education North Central East London (HENCEL), which covers 12 Boroughs.
For more information on our Perinatal Mental Health training programmes and options for bespoke training please contact: [email protected] or phone Philippa Bishop – iHV Training Programme Manager on: 07539 117775.
