iHV supports MMHA response to DH’s Safer Maternity Care report

The iHV supports the Maternal Mental Health Alliance’s (MMHA’s) response to yesterday’s publication of the Department of Health report ‘Safer Maternity Care: Next steps towards the national maternity ambition’.

MMHA highlights the mention of perinatal mental health in the report (on page 17) – but would really like to push for mums’ mental health to be embedded across all of the actions coming out of the report. Maternity safety is not just physical health: unless women’s mental health is looked after, their and their babies’ lives could also be at risk.

Dr Cheryll Adams, Executive Director iHV said:

“iHV supports the push by MMHA to keep maternal mental health at the forefront of the government’s drive to improve maternity care. We welcome the implementation of this plan, including maternal mental health, and call on the government to ensure that specialist mental health support is available in every maternity /health visiting service to provide support to every mother and her family who require this service.”

Dr Alain Gregoire, Chair of the Maternal Mental Health Alliance, commented:

“We welcome the announcement by the Secretary of State of a Safer Maternity Care action plan and the inclusion of improvements in perinatal mental health care in this. Mental illnesses are the most common serious health complications of pregnancy and the postnatal period, and a major cause of maternal death. There has been no sign of improvement in the effects of these illnesses on mothers and their babies in the past decades, despite significant improvements in physical health outcomes.”

Read Dr Alain Gregoire's full response and suggestions about how mental health could be embedded into the key themes and recommendations in the report

MMHA update: Independent Evaluation launch and funding announcement

As a partner and a member of the Maternal Mental Health Alliance (MMHA) operations group, the iHV is delighted to share this good news.

Launch of independent evaluation of Everyone’s Business Campaign

Today, Tuesday 19 July, sees the launch of the independent evaluation of the MMHA Everyone’s Business Campaign.

This evaluation highlights the substantial impact the campaign has had; the reasons for the impact, and where the campaign will need to focus in the future.

Please find below the direct links to the Briefing Paper (just two pages) and the full report:

2 page briefing paper, with a summary of the report's main findings

Copy of the full independent report

Please use #everyonesbusiness when mentioning in social media!

MMHA Everyone’s Business Funding announcement

Also, hot off the press, fantastic news! Comic Relief confirmed that the follow-up funding for the MMHA and the Everyone’s Business Campaign has been secured! See below:

A grant of £750,000 has been secured from Comic Relief. This is intended to:

sustain and build on the momentum of the first Phase of the Everyone’s Business Campaign
increase the Maternal Mental Health Alliance’s internal resource and capacity

The grant will continue to be hosted by Action on Postpartum Psychosis (APP) on behalf of the MMHA

MMHA says:

a huge thank you for all your on-going support – the outcomes of the evaluation and further funding is a reflection of how well the alliance has worked collectively.

Early Intervention Foundation publishes their Foundations for Life research report

EIF - Foundations for Life: What Works to Support Parent Child Interaction in the Early Years

This report seeks to look at the cost effectiveness of different programmes to support the development of healthy attachment. It is hoped to be of value to commissioners trying to decide where to spend their money.

Inevitably it’s been a challenging piece of work to do and some of the conclusions are being seen as controversial. For example, the originator and iHV ambassador of the MESCH programme in the UK, Professors Lynn Kemp and Sarah Cowley respectively, have been very disappointed at the fact that MESCH has been included in the attachment section, whereas it is a broad-based multi-faceted programme delivered as part of a universal service, rather than a targeted programme focused on attachment.

Please see their statement about the MESCH programme here

Dr Cheryll Adams, iHV director said:

“This report must be interpreted with extreme care. It was a very difficult piece of work to embark on and some of the recommendations will be seen as very surprising or disappointing. Indeed, there could even be an interpretation that it challenges the value of universal services, although that wasn’t at all its purpose.

We would challenge the report for promoting the commissioning of early intervention services to respond to overt problems which the EIF identifies as risk. This suggests intervention from age 2-3 years onwards, instead of the health visitor interpretation of early intervention where the recognition of risk is in the first year of life and intervening then when interventions can be most effective.

We must encourage commissioners to invest in services upstream of problems. Even if the evidence for the value of doing this hasn’t been invested in, there is a clear logic that prevention is better than cure. For example, how much better to pick up glue ear affecting hearing early, rather than speech delay and its social and emotional consequences at age 2½.”

We encourage health visitors to read the report and let us and the EIF know their thoughts on its value for strengthening commissioning to improve children’s lives. Also to be ready to challenge inappropriate commissioning decisions based on its findings.

New report – Better Mental Health For All: A public health approach to mental health improvement

The Faculty of Public Health (FPH) is today [Wednesday 15 June] publishing a ground-breaking report about public mental health, which makes the case for improving mental health for everyone and preventing mental health problems.

“Better Mental Health For All: a public health approach to mental health improvement” is the work of the FPH’s Mental Health Committee in conjunction with the Mental Health Foundation. Public Health England supported the project financially, which enabled the FPH to commission the Mental Health Foundation’s involvement and support for production.

Go to Better Mental Health For All report

Report – Better Mental Health For All
A public health approach to mental health improvement

Professor John Ashton, President of FPH, said: “Mental illness affects everyone – either through our own experience, or our family and friends. Mental, emotional or psychological problems account for more disability than all physical health problems put together. There can be no health without mental health.”

This report focuses on what can be done individually and collectively to enhance the mental health of individuals, families and communities by using a public health approach. It is intended as a resource for public health practitioners to support the development of knowledge and skills in public mental health.

Section one – maps out why mental health is an important and often overlooked aspect of overall health.
Section two – outlines the risk and protective factors through the life course and across communities.
Section three – addresses approaches and interventions to improve mental healthat different stages of the life course and in different settings.
Section four – offers a practical guide to enable practitioners to support their own mental wellbeing.

Nursing Associate role to go ahead!

A new role that will sit alongside existing nursing care support workers and fully-qualified registered nurses to deliver hands-on care moved a step closer today as Health Education England (HEE) published the response to its recent consultation on the Nursing Associate role. The consultation attracted more than 1,000 responses from individuals including patients, members of the public and a wide range of organisations including professional bodies, trade unions, health care and social care providers and commissioners of healthcare.

The role will be given the title Nursing Associate. In order to get the implementation of the Nursing Associate role right, HEE intends to appoint ‘test sites’. Five workshops will take place in England in July so that HEE can engage with stakeholders on the scope of practice of the new role. Early test sites will recruit 1,000 students to start training for the new role in 2017.

HEE will run five events in July across England, where they will invite people and organisations to help draw up the scope of practice for the role. The dates and locations are set out below and bookings will be open soon, via Eventbrite – more information will be available on the HEE website.

1 July            Birmingham
15 July           London
20 July           Manchester
22 July           Reading
29 July           Newcastle

Join Lisa Bayliss-Pratt, HEE’s Nursing Director, for a Twitter chat on the @WeNurses platform on Tuesday 7 June (8-9pm) to debate areas of the consultation and ask questions using the hashtag #shapeofcaring. They will also running a webinar, the details of which will be available at the HEE website.

Slight falls in annual stillbirth and neonatal death rates, MNI report finds

Research published shows the wide regional variation in the incidence of stillbirth and neonatal deaths in the UK.

The report – part of the Maternal, Newborn and Infant outcome review programme and carried out by MBRRACE-UK – focuses on stillbirth and neonatal death rates among babies born at 24 weeks of gestation or more.

The study found that in 2014 there was a slight fall in both the stillbirth and neonatal death rates – 4.16 and 1.77 per 1,000 total births compared to 4.2 and 1.84 in 2013 – although this pattern was not uniform across the UK.

However, behind these headline figures significant regional variations remain, not solely explained by factors that often influence mortality rates, such as poverty, mother’s age, multiple birth and ethnicity.

Understanding the public health practitioner workforce report

The Centre for Workforce Intelligence (CfWI) has published the report: “Understanding the public health practitioner workforce”.

This report was jointly commissioned by the Department of Health (DH), Health Education England (HEE) and Public Health England (PHE) to gather information on the public health practitioner workforce in England. The study is to inform and support stakeholder decisions relating to the future of the public health practitioner workforce and their impact on population health and wellbeing.

The report includes a summary of the regulatory bodies responsible for members of this workforce, a proposed definition of a ‘public health practitioner’ for use in future discussions and workforce planning, and examples of the roles filled by public health practitioners.

Through a mixture of stakeholder interviews and desk research, this CfWI study has found:

Practitioners may come from a wide variety of backgrounds, with a mixture of qualifications. Some may belong to registered professions, but many do not.
As a result, there is a broad range of job titles and definitions in use to describe the role of a public health practitioner, with no consistency across or even within sectors.
There are also multiple routes for becoming a practitioner and for developing a career as a practitioner; some undergo further training to become a public health specialist but for most there is no linear career progression.
Due to the diverse nature of the workforce, data on workforce numbers for public health practitioners is sparse. Counting the practitioner workforce at a local and national level would help employers and policymakers to make decisions on service planning.
Practitioner registration schemes have mixed backing from stakeholders.
Better understanding of the practitioner workforce will help the system to manage the financial and demand pressures that are being identified in other CfWI public health studies.

Read the report

Losing in the long run report is published

Losing in the Long Run report, produced by Action for Children in partnership with the National Children’s Bureau and The Children’s Society, calls for a renewed commitment from Government to vital early intervention services that support children, young people, and families.

It shows that although local councillors believe in the value of early intervention services, they are concerned that maintaining spending on services, like children’s centres, will get more challenging.

The report asks whether further reductions are sustainable and desirable, providing evidence from local councillors, young people and parents about the value of early intervention, and the impact that funding reductions have on the availability of these services locally.

Go to Losing in the Long Run report

iHV welcomes Mental Health Taskforce report

The independent Mental Health Taskforce to the NHS in England publishes its report today – The Five Year Forward View for Mental Health.

The taskforce gives a frank assessment of the state of current mental health care across the NHS, highlighting that one in four people will experience a mental health problem in their lifetime and the cost of mental ill-health to the economy, NHS and society is £105bn a year.

In response to this report, NHS England has committed to the biggest transformation of mental health care across the NHS in a generation, pledging to help more than a million extra people and investing more than a billion pounds a year by 2020/21.

Dr Cheryll Adams, Executive Director of the iHV, said:

“The Institute very much welcomes this wide ranging report and hopes that indeed it will attract the promised funding of £1billion. We are very pleased that perinatal mental health has again been singled out as a mental health priority.”

One in five mothers suffers from mental health problems during pregnancy or in the first year after childbirth. It costs around £8.1 billion for each annual birth cohort or almost £10,000 per birth. Yet fewer than 15% of areas have the necessary perinatal mental health services and more than 40% provide none at all.

The report suggests that new funding should be invested to support at least 30,000 more women each year to access evidence-based specialist mental health care in the perinatal period.

The Five Year Forward View for Mental Health Report

Celebrating Progress – Nursing Division Health Visitor Service Transformation Projects for England

NHS England allocated service transformation funding (as part of the national Health Visitor delivery plan) 2013 and 2014 to all Area Teams and as a result, some 42 projects were delivered.

The ‘Celebrating Progress – Nursing Division Health Visitor Service Transformation Projects for England’ report provides an overview of the funding process and project development. It presents summaries of the projects in order to illustrate the types of initiatives that were delivered, and the impact they have had on service provision, along with a means of sharing best practice, learning and resources available

This report is dedicated to providing a compendium of the projects outlining the project plan, partners, deliverables, impact (or expected impact), resources for sharing and contact details of project leads to facilitate sharing of best practice across the system.