News

17 November 2011

The fifth cycle of reviews has now begun and 17 mother and baby units throughout the UK are participating this year - more than ever before. More units will be working towards accreditation over the coming year. Seven units were accredited this year:

ACCREDITED AS EXCELLENT:

Beadnell Ward, Morpeth

ACCREDITED:

The Beeches, Derby

Brockington Mother and Baby Unit, Stafford

Leeds Mother and Baby Unit

Margaret Oates Mother and Baby Unit, Hackney

Margaret Oates Mother and Baby Unit, Nottingham

Melbury Lodge, Winchester

Congratulations to all the teams for their achievement.

20 December 2010

New mailbase discussion group for National Perinatal and Infant Mental Health Network

At this time, perhaps more than ever before, having links with others working in the field of maternal and perinatal mental health is important, so as to ensure that we have access to collective wisdom, experience and knowledge. There are policy changes on the way in relation to the NHS (see the White Paper for reference to maternity networks) and children’s services as well as a challenging fiscal and organisational agenda.

The Royal College of Psychiatrists’ Centre for Quality Improvement has agreed to work with CHIMAT to bring members of the national PIMH electronic network their own discussion group.

The advantages this offers all network members are:

• Provision of relevant timely advice from members to members
• Easy to use method for professionals to share good practice and solve problems as a multi-professional community
• Easily accessible way for policy teams to consult with professionals and for professionals to advise and influence policy
• Professionals can access mutual support if they wish by establishing telephone and face to face contact
• Promotion of service improvement, leading to learning transfer and successful implementation of service improvements
• Sharing and improving personal therapeutic and practice skills
• A stepped approach supporting novice to expert members
• Above all this network will enable all of you to support each other

It’s a facility which the Royal College already offers to mental health professionals via the FOCUS and QNIC email discussion groups which are used nationally and internationally.

This new mailbase will have a specific focus on Perinatal and Infant Mental Health which we hope will attract a wide range of people of varying professional backgrounds working with these issues.

Its being offered on a trial basis.

So, if you don’t use it, then you will probably lose it and with it, a good  opportunity to share issues quickly and easily across wide range of colleagues.

So please join it, and then send some questions, opinions, or requests to the other members. If each network member does this once in the next 6 months that will generate nearly two questions a day, and help to ensure its longevity.

To get involved, send an email to pimh@cru.rcpsych.ac.uk with JOIN in the subject heading.