Inspiring day at PIMH Relationships Matters! Conference #iHVPIMH19

What an amazing day we had at iHV’s annual PIMH conference – Perinatal and Infant Mental Health: Relationships Matters! – #iHVPIMH19

Held on 10 September in London, the second annual iHV PIMH conference was in collaboration with the Maternal Mental Health Alliance. The conference created time to prioritise and place relationships at the heart of perinatal and infant mental health care. We shared, discussed and reflected together on the latest evidence, research and experiences of PIMH care in the context of relationships being fundamental to good parental and infant mental health.

Sold out several weeks ago, we had a full house of 200. “Inspiring, very interesting, thought provoking, insightful, really enjoyable, fantastic, hopeful, excellent” – just some of the feedback that we’ve received.

A big thank you to all our speakers, presenters and exhibitors for helping to make the day.

Go to conference programme

Photos of the conference

We have made a short video of some of the photos taken during the conference:

Tweets from #iHVPIMH19

For those of you who could not either join us yesterday or could not follow the #iHVPIMH19 hashtag on Twitter, we’ve collected and made a little “Wakelet” collection of the day’s tweets so you can follow some of what was shared. Please see below.

MMHA collaborates with iHV on PIMH conference #iHVPIMH19

We are delighted to announce that this year’s iHV Perinatal & Infant Mental Health (PIMH) Conference will be held in collaboration with the Maternal Mental Health Alliance (MMHA). Taking place on Tuesday 10 September in London, it will focus on the importance of good relationships in perinatal and infant mental health (PIMH) care.

Melita Walker, Mental Health Lead, iHV said:

“In the spirit of relationships, we are delighted to be collaborating with the MMHA to deliver the annual iHV PIMH Conference; Relationships Matter! We have a fantastic programme and we look forward to welcoming delegates to think together about the importance of relationships at every level of PIMH care.”

Together, we will share, discuss and reflect on the latest evidence, research and lived experiences in the context of relationships being fundamental to good parental and infant mental health.

The conference programme is designed to be of value to practitioners working alongside families across the care pathway, those working specifically in mental health, commissioners, local authorities and parents.

Clare Dolman, Vice Chair of the MMHA commented:

“We are delighted to collaborate with iHV on their second annual PIMH conference and look forward to welcoming delegates, hearing from those with experience of PIMH care and discussing opportunities to improve relationships and access to specialist services.”

Dr Alain Gregoire, Chair of the MMHA, will be discussing the importance of relationships in relation to policy, campaigning, practice and experience of PIMH care. There will also be a panel discussion with experts by experience hosted by MMHA’s Champion Network Manager, Maria Bavetta, about how good relationships with care providers can make a real difference to the lives of women and families.

Click here for more information, ticket costs and how to book

*Early bird rates are available until 7th July 2019, after which standard rates will apply.*

Book your place today!

PIMH Conference 2019 – bookings now open

During Infant Mental Health Awareness Week 2019, we are delighted to open bookings for our annual PIMH conference “Perinatal and Infant Mental Health: Relationships Matter” being held in London on Tuesday 10 September 2019.

Achieving and enjoying good mental health for individuals, families, communities and societies relies on good relationships at every level. In the current context of perinatal and infant mental health (PIMH) care, there are many barriers and opportunities for this.

This is the must-attend event in 2019 for all organisations working alongside professionals to enable good family mental health and wellbeing.

The programme will feature high-profile leading speakers and experts in the fields of perinatal and infant mental health and offer peer-to-peer networking opportunities. The conference is designed to be of value to iHV PIMH Champions, parents, policy makers, health visitors, GPs, midwives, commissioners, local authority children’s service staff, specialist perinatal mental health practitioners and other practitioners working in mental health.

Find out what happened at last year's PIMH conference

Our last 2 iHV conferences were sold out, so we do anticipate that these places will sell very quickly as we’ve already had a huge amount of interest in joining us at this event.

Earlybird tickets (for iHV Champion Members, iHV members and non-members) are available until 7 July 2019, so don’t miss them! Limited student places also available.

Click here for further details

Go to our online booking system to book your place today

We always seek to ensure our activities comply with the UNICEF Baby Friendly Initiative – our events are not and never will be sponsored by the formula milk industry.

New dates – Multi-Agency PIMH Champions Training for individuals

New training date: 10 and 11 July 2019

Location: London

Following previous sell out events, we are offering a further rare opportunity to access a place to train as a Multi-Agency iHV Champion for Perinatal & Infant Mental Health via our highly acclaimed integrated programme.

The programme is an accredited 2 day course which will cover a wide and updated programme content supported by contemporaneous evidence and policy underpinning practice.

This training has been specifically designed to support an onward cascade across a multi-agency audience to ensure that all staff working alongside mothers and their families perinatally can access awareness training.

For more details and how to book

Mums Matter! is the theme for 2019 UK Maternal Mental Health Matters Awareness Week

The iHV is delighted to be supporting UK Maternal Mental Health Matters Awareness Week 2019 which runs from 29 April until 5 May 2019. Perinantal and Infant Mental Health (PIMH) has been a priority for us from day one, and we are proud of our work in mental health.

We firmly believe that there is no health without mental health and that health visitors are uniquely placed to:

– prevent mental ill-health in the first instance
– promote mental wellbeing of the mother, other family members and the wider community
– offer evidence-based interventions to families experiencing mental health problems
– refer on for timely specialist support
– coordinate integrated care experiences
– support relationships between parents and infants, the couple relationship and wider family relationships

In order to deliver a high-quality service, families need health visitors to be in sufficient numbers, with the right capacity, competence and confidence. There is strong support for a universally well-trained workforce that is complemented, supported and strengthened through strong leadership from specialist health visitors in every organisation.

Find out more about the Maternal Mental Health Alliance's Call to ACT NOW

Throughout the week we are going to be sharing examples of how leadership from health visitors who practice at an advanced level (often referred to as Specialist PIMH Health Visitors) are making a difference! Follow #maternalMHmatters on Twitter for all the latest updates.

Find out more about Our Work in Mental Health

About Maternal Mental Health Week

Led by the Perinatal Mental Health Partnership (PMHP), the week focuses on mums affected by Maternal Mental Illness uses the general hashtag #maternalmhmatters on social media.

Follow PMHP on Twitter – @PMHPU and Instagram – @perinatalmhpartnership

Each day this week has a theme and specific hashtag:

– Monday 29 April – ‘What is Perinatal Mental Health’? – #pmhpwhatispmh
– Tuesday 30 April – What good support looks like – #pmhpsupport
– Wednesday 1 May – This is World Maternal Mental Health Day and the theme for the day will be ‘The Village’, focusing on how we work together to remove barriers to services so all mums who need services can access them – #pmhpthevillage
– Thursday 2nd May – focus on recovery – #pmhprecovery
– riday 3 May – To end the week, we will be encouraging the creation of a virtual ‘Positivity Pot’ so do share articles and blogs about recovery, looking ahead to the future and selfcare – #pmhppositivitypot

How you can get involved:

– Highlight what you and / or your organisation are doing to promote mental well being of families and how you/health visiting service supports families affected by perinatal mental illness.
– Use the #maternalmhmatters hashtag in conjunction with #healthvisiting on social media when referring to the week and the daily specific hashtags if relating to the daily theme.
– Get in touch with us – write a blog/send pics of activities you are doing as part of MMH week/MMH day.
– Make contact with local commissioners and share the importance of your role in PIMH, why not take a commissioner out with you/ ask a parent to share their experience , show them the Channel 4 film we made last year, facilitate them to talk with a family who you have supported.
– Book on the iHV PIMH Champions training
– #PNDHOUR – Following on from the success of the last two years, Rosey from PNDandMe will be running #PNDHOUR every night during the week at 8pm on Twitter. Do join in!

Melita Walker, Mental Health Lead, iHV

New opportunity with iHV – Professional Development Officer, PIMH

Exciting and unique development opportunity with the Institute

Professional Development Officer, Perinatal and Infant Mental Health, South of England

The iHV is seeking to appoint health visitor expert in perinatal and infant mental health and practice development to work with them supporting training and various other related projects, as well as covering some national meetings. The post holder will be up to full time but could be 4 days, we would also consider a job share if the post holders were based in different areas of the country.

The post holder, who will have a master’s degree, will ideally be based in the South of England but this isn’t essential and will be prepared to travel within the post, mostly within the UK, but potentially also to European countries. They will ideally be an iHV infant and perinatal mental health champion, have broad experience in these fields, with additional research or project development experience.

A confident self-starter, they will deliver training, attend meetings, develop regional forums for our PIMH Champions and input advice to other work streams on request including to a European project just funded.

The post holder will be highly respected by colleagues for their capacity to drive and deliver local professional developments.

1-year post/secondment in the first instance with expectation of extension. The Institute offers a competitive pension scheme.

For further details, job description and application form

Applications close: 9.00 am Monday 18 March 2019

Interviews: Thursday 4 April 2019

New date – Multi-Agency PIMH Champions Training for individuals

New training date: 29 and 30 April 2019

Location: London

The programme is an accredited 2 day course which will cover a wide and updated programme content supported by contemporaneous evidence and policy underpinning practice.

For more details and how to book

iHV publishes response to NHS Mental Health consultation

The Institute of Health Visiting (iHV) has published its response to the consultation – Mental Health in the Long-Term Plan for the NHS.

The consultation is to identify opportunities to deliver the NHS’s goal to provide world-class mental healthcare – improving the outcomes for everyone who uses the NHS services.

Dr Cheryll Adams CBE, Executive Director, Institute of Health Visiting said:

“At the Institute, we firmly believe there is no health without mental health, which is why we have perinatal and infant mental health (PIMH) as a priority focus. We welcome the opportunity to respond to this consultation to ensure that all families get consistent, accessible, high quality care and support for their mental health during the perinatal period. Our response reflects the many consultations and surveys we have done with our members and other stakeholders over the recent months and years.”

The Institute’s response includes its top three priorities in mental health:

Resourcing health visiting services through joint commissioning which formally requires health visitors to take a specific lead for perinatal and infant mental health;
Closing the gap between knowledge of what affects child and family mental health, and how services are commissioned and organised to implement this knowledge;
A need to concentrate efforts to create a much wider understanding of the epidemiology of mental illness with so much of it having its origins in the very first years of life.

Dr Adams continued:

“Early intervention for families in the perinatal period will reduce the burden of mental illness across the life-course! We have to get that message over to politicians and policy makers, so that funding is allocated upstream and not disproportionately spent on secondary and tertiary care, fixing problems that could have been prevented from occurring in the first place.

“This submission focuses on how, with the right support from the NHS and partner organisations, health visitors can ensure that all families with children receive the right care and support for their mental health, at the right time, in the right place.”

Download iHV's response to Mental Health in the Long-Term Plan for the NHS Consultation

Download Appendix to Mental Health in the Long-Term Plan for the NHS Consultation

HV support services for Perinatal Mental Health may be worse than stated in press today

Further to the story on the limited NHS support for Perinatal Mental Illness published by the Guardian today, which lays bare the poor quality of community services for new mothers, iHV reinforces those concerns and advises that today’s situation is likely to have deteriorated significantly since the audit was completed. The leaked report was compiled in Spring 2017 and uses data from 2016.

Dr Cheryll Adams CBE, Executive Director, iHV, said:

“The Institute of Health Visiting warns that the real state of health visiting support for mothers suffering with perinatal mental illness may be significantly worse than that found by the NHS Benchmarking report 14 months ago, as there have been further cuts to the workforce and the development of a significant postcode lottery of service up and down the country.

“Health visitors across the country continue to strive to deliver an excellent service to children and families, and will do everything in their power to support mothers they find are affected. The challenge they face is that many no longer deliver a universal service after their 6-8 week contact, when depression and other mental illness may not yet have manifested itself.”

From the annual iHV State of Health Visiting survey 2017 (November 2017 and 1413 respondents), 51% reported cuts to HV posts, 16% reported cuts to their skill-mix team, 12% were awaiting news of the scale of expected cuts, or reported frozen posts and students not employed, only 22% said there had been no cuts where they worked.

In addition from the 2017 survey, 15% are always able to offer listening visits to mothers identified as experiencing postnatal depression, with 36% offering them mostly and 27% some of the time. This is worse than in 2015, when 27% were able to offer listening visits all of the time.

The 2017 survey results indicate that health visitors are increasingly focused on the most vulnerable children and families at the expense of the five mandated reviews, and that the Healthy Child Programme is being implemented in an increasingly ‘targeted’ manner, against its fundamental design principles of full access to it being the right of every baby born in England. The result is that HVs cannot be confident that they are identifying needs or providing early primary prevention. 60% state their ability to make a difference is hampered by ‘Focusing only on those most at risk [that] dilutes universal service’; rather, they are managing risk with children and families with known needs.

Read Guardian article: Thousands of mothers left to cope alone with mental illness

Mental health minister celebrates NHS 70 years with iHV Perinatal & Infant Mental Health Champions

On Thursday 5 July, the Minister for Mental Health and Inequalities, Jackie Doyle-Price MP, celebrated 70 years of the NHS with Institute of Health Visiting (iHV) Perinatal Mental Health Champions and Perinatal & Infant Mental Health Champions in Manchester.

During the celebration event, the Minister heard about the work of the health visitor, with a specific focus on the critical role that health visitors play in preventing mental illness, promoting mental wellness across the life-course and supporting/offering evidence-based interventions to families suffering from perinatal mental illness. She also heard a very powerful presentation from Jane Fisher, a mother with lived experience, on the importance of her relationship with her health visitor as part of her recovery.

Minister for Mental Health and Inequalities Jackie Doyle-Price meeting iHV PIMH Champions in Manchester to mark #NHS70

Dr Cheryll Adams CBE, Executive Director at the Institute of Health Visiting, said:

“5^th July was such a special day for the NHS. We were delighted to celebrate its 70^th year with some of our wonderful Perinatal & Infant Mental Health Champions in Manchester – a very appropriate location as health visiting started in Salford /Manchester in 1862 and there is a long history of Manchester supporting public health improvement. This was a great opportunity to share with the Minister the fantastic and essential work that health visitors and our Champions provide to mothers and their families.

“Perinatal mental health is key for all parents and their families – at the Institute we recognise the importance of this and have a range of accredited training programmes to ensure that health visitors and other health professionals have the correct information knowledge and understanding to support parents and families to promote and maintain their mental wellbeing. On marking the 70^thbirthday of the NHS, I am delighted to announce that the iHV has now trained over 1500 Perinatal & Infant Mental Health Champions – and, if each cascaded their knowledge to only 20 colleagues, then that’s over 30,000 healthcare professionals who have better insight to supporting perinatal and infant mental health – quite amazing!

“This celebratory event shone a light on health visitors and our amazing Champions who play such an important role in helping ensure all children have the best start in life.”

Minister for Mental Health and Inequalities Jackie Doyle-Price said:

“I was privileged to spend some of the NHS’ 70th birthday with such fantastic advocates for the Health Visiting profession.

“They really are our eyes and ears for good perinatal health, and do an important job in supporting new parents and families through a child’s early years. I know they are working under increasing pressures, and expect local authorities to make sure they support health visitors in communities across the country.”

Minister for Mental Health and Inequalities Jackie Doyle-Price meeting iHV PIMH Champions in Manchester to mark #NHS70

Andrea Johns FiHV, Professional Lead Wirral- 0-19 and Cheshire East- Health Visiting, commented:

“I was delighted to see that the Minister was focusing on health visitors on the NHS 70^th birthday. The role of the health visitor is key to improvements in perinatal and infant mental health. Health visitors are highly skilled in identifying mental health issues and work closely with partner agencies to deliver high quality, evidence-based support in the community.”

Melita Walker FiHV, Mental Health Lead, Institute of Health Visiting, added:

“NHS70 for the health visitors who met with Jackie Doyle-Price will be remembered as a day of celebration and hope. It was brilliant to be able to share the great work that health visitors are doing and also have the opportunity to discuss the challenges and think collaboratively for solutions.”