About the Perinatal Mental Health programme

The Perinatal Mental Health programme has been designed to help educate and develop the workforce caring for people with perinatal mental health issues.

This programme currently provides courses across four key areas:

• Perinatal Mental Health
• Perinatal Mental Health for Health Visitors
• Perinatal Mental Health for Occupational Therapists
• Perinatal Parent and Infant Mental Health
• Routine Outcome Monitoring in Specialist Perinatal Mental Health Services

Routine Outcome Monitoring in Specialist Perinatal Mental Health Services (new)

Specialist Perinatal Mental Health Services (SPMHS) provide support to service users with moderate to severe mental health difficulties in the antenatal and postnatal period. This elearning is adapted from a manual produced by the Child Outcomes Research Consortium – a project of the Anna Freud Centre – and offers tools, tips and information to help in implementing routine outcome measurement (ROM) in SPMHS and maternity settings.

The aim of this programme is to provide a helpful framework and useful suggestions for services in how to implement measures. Each service is unique and decisions around how best to implement measures should be made locally, while still being informed by best practice.

Session 1 An introduction to Routine Outcome Monitoring (ROMS)

Session 2 System enablers for implementation of ROMS

Session 3 Using patient reported outcome measures

Session 4 Consideration of other measurement tools and approaches

Session 5 Analysing reporting interpreting aggregated ROM data

To access please visit Routine Outcome Monitoring in Specialist Perinatal Mental Health Services

Acknowledgements

The team responsible for creating this elearning would like to acknowledge the original authors of the Implementing routine outcome monitoring in specialist perinatal mental health services manual:

• Sally Marriot
• Michelle Sleed
• Kate Dalzell

We would also like to thank Dr Giles Berrisford. National speciality Advisor for Perinatal Mental Health for NHS England.

Perinatal Mental Health

This course is designed to provide high quality and evidence-based elearning resources in the field of perinatal mental health.

NHS England has developed a set of five elearning sessions, each taking around 20 to 30 minutes to complete. The sessions assume no specific prior knowledge of perinatal mental healthcare and are designed to be accessed by any health care professional who has contact with people in the time when they’re considering pregnancy, right up until their child is around 1 year old.

All content is referenced, and the learner is signposted to additional detailed learning resources for more advanced learning. The content and structure of the sessions were formally agreed working with subject matters experts across the field.

The sessions commence with 2 introductory sessions, which provide a broad overview of the topic and essential learning points for all health professionals. The 2 subsequent sessions focus on different stages of a mother’s journey – the pregnancy, birth and the first year of a child’s life. The subsequent sessions contain more detailed advice, which may be of interest to particular professional groups, for example, obstetricians choosing to complete session 4 on labour and the immediate post-partum.

• Introduction to Perinatal Mental Health 1
• Introduction to Perinatal Mental Health 2
• Perinatal Mental Health in the Antenatal Period
• Perinatal Mental Health in the Postnatal Period

Perinatal Mental Health for Health Visitors

The Health Visitor Implementation Plan contains core aims to “improve opportunities to use the full range of health visitor skills and re-emphasise health visitors as key public health professionals” and to “ensure a strong focus on responding to differential needs and improving outcomes, and that systems promote effective join-up between services in ways that best meet local needs.”

Training health visitors to identify and treat postnatal depression, including making referrals to specialist counselling, is a key driver of these aims.

The 2 elearning modules developed by the Institute of Health Visiting, in partnership with NHS England look at:

• Perinatal Mental Health: Health Visitor Assessment
• Perinatal Mental Health: Health Visitor Interventions

The resource is made up of expert peer reviewed content and videos, interactions and knowledge checks.

To access please visit Perinatal Mental Health for Health Visitors

Perinatal Mental Health for Occupational Therapists

Training programme for occupational therapists working in perinatal mental health services.

This elearning course is for occupational therapists working in perinatal mental health services and those who are new to or wishing to work in this specialist area of practice. Sessions may also be of interest to other professionals working in perinatal mental health and maternity services. It has been developed by the Royal College of Occupational Therapists in collaboration with NHS England elearning for healthcare.

The course provides occupational therapists with the information and skills they need to support women’s participation in activities that are important to them, their infants and families, and to facilitate women’s recovery from perinatal mental health problems.

It is recommended that you access the sessions on a laptop or desktop.

Each session includes information, case studies relating to the content of the session and a self-assessment to check participants’ knowledge and understanding. Links to additional information and resources are provided and participants are encouraged to create a ‘personal action plan’ detailing how they will continue their learning and develop their practice.

More information

The course content was written by a group of occupational therapy experts including clinicians, researchers, and individuals with lived experience of perinatal mental health problems. Case studies are based on real life examples and include assessment/intervention plans written by experienced occupational therapists for participants to compare with their own. The course was peer reviewed by a wider group of occupational therapists and checked for quality and consistency by the Royal College of Occupational Therapists’ practice and professional development teams.

To access please visit Perinatal Mental Health for Occupational Therapists

• Session 1: The Occupational Therapist and Perinatal Mental Health
• Session 2: Referrals and Information Gathering
• Session 3: Assessment Tools and Processes
• Session 4: Occupational Formulation and Goal Setting
• Session 5: Occupational Therapy Interventions in Perinatal Mental Health
• Session 6: Discharge and outcomes
• *New – Session 7: Perinatal mental health, physical health and disability
• *New – Session 8: Perinatal mental health: returning to work or study
• *New – Session 9: Perinatal mental health and neurodiversity

Perinatal Mental Health Competency Framework

NHS England commissioned the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust to develop a skills competency framework for all staff working to support mothers and families across the perinatal care pathway, from preconception to postnatal care.

The framework is designed to increase general awareness of perinatal mental health disorders and associated care skills, supporting advanced and specialist practice.  Competencies are the skills, knowledge and behaviours that deliver high quality care and enable the continuous improvement of services.

It has been developed to standardise competencies for perinatal mental health practice across England. This will help to ensure the workforce is confident and suitably skilled to identify need and deliver care to women who have mental health problems during the perinatal period, thereby increasing access to appropriate evidence-based specialist treatment.

This framework lists several competencies over separate domains and is divided into categories for different types of healthcare worker; including those who have limited infrequent contact, to those who work in specialist perinatal services. Over time, this competency framework may be used for recruitment, training and development, and discussions about career progression.

A review has been undertaken around usage of this framework. Further improvements will be made in due course to improve access.

To access please visit Perinatal Mental Health Competency Framework

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the following for contributing to the development of the Perinatal Mental Health Parent-Infant eLearning programme:

• NHS Greater Manchester Integrated Care (formerly Greater Manchester Health and Social Care Partnership)
• Dr Fatima Abu Amna, Consultant Obstetrician and Gynaecologist with special interest in perinatal mental health, Wrightington, Wigan and Leigh Foundation Trust
• Dr Jenny Atkinson, Clinical Psychologist and Clinical Lead for Perinatal and Parent Infant Mental Health in Bolton
• Laura Brodetsky, Senior Mental Health Practitioner, Tameside and Glossop Early Attachment Service
• Mary Brown, Senior Mental Health Practitioner, Tameside and Glossop Early Attachment Service
• Dr Will Davies, Consultant Perinatal Psychiatrist, Pennine Lancashire Specialist Perinatal Community Mental Health Team
• Dr Sarita Dewan, Clinical Psychologist and Clinical Lead for Parent and Infant Mental Health in Heywood, Middleton and Rochdale Early Attachment Service
• Dr Phillipa Gardner, Clinical Psychologist and Clinical Lead for Parent and Infant Mental Health in the Oldham Early Attachment Service
• Dr Pauline Lee, Consultant Clinical Psychologist, Strategic Clinical Lead Parent-Infant Mental Health, NHS Greater Manchester Integrated Care, Joint Clinical Lead for Tameside and Glossop Early Attachment Service
• Dr James McManus, Consultant Clinical Psychologist, Trafford Community Service, Greater Manchester Mental Health NHS Foundation Trust
• Dr Aaron McMeekin, Consultant Perinatal Psychiatrist, Specialist Perinatal Service, Greater Manchester Mental Health NHS Foundation Trust and honorary senior clinical teacher at the academic unit of medical education (University of Sheffield)
• Dr Ipshita Mukherjee, Consultant Perinatal Psychiatrist, Specialist Perinatal Service, Greater Manchester Mental Health NHS Foundation Trust
• Dr Kirsty Pratt, Consultant Clinical Psychologist, Specialist Perinatal Service, Greater Manchester Mental Health NHS Foundation Trust
• Katie Reid, Consultant Child and Adolescent Psychotherapist, Clinical Lead Tameside and Glossop Early Attachment Service
• Dr Helen Stevens, Clinical Psychologist and Clinical Lead for Parent Infant Mental Health in Bury
• Dr Catherine Tighe, Clinical Psychologist and Clinical Lead for Parent Infant Mental Health in Trafford
• Dr Lisa Wardle, Clinical Psychologist, Specialist Perinatal Service, Greater Manchester Mental Health NHS Foundation Trust
• Angela Wood, Interpersonal Therapist at Tameside and Glossop Healthy Minds and one of Greater Manchester Parent Infant Mental Health leads for NHS Talking Therapies

How to access

In order to access the Perinatal Mental Health programme, you will need an elfh account. If you do not have one, then you can register by selecting the Register button below.

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To view the Perinatal Mental Health programme, select the View button below. If you already have an account with elfh, you will also be able to login and enrol on the programme from the View button.

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NHS healthcare staff in England

The Perinatal Mental Health programme is also available to NHS healthcare staff via the Electronic Staff Record (ESR). Accessing this elearning via ESR means that your completions will transfer with you throughout your NHS career.

Further details are available here.

Not an NHS organisation?

If you are not an NHS health or care organisation and therefore do not qualify for free access elfh Hub, you may be able to access the service by creating an OpenAthens account.

To check whether or not you qualify for free access via OpenAthens, you can view the eligibility criteria and register on the ‘OpenAthens’ portal.

Registering large numbers of users

If you are a HR, IT or Practice Manager and would like to register and enrol large numbers of staff within your organisation for access onto the Perinatal Mental Health programme, please contact elfh directly.

Organisations wishing to use their own LMS

For HR departments wanting to know more about gaining access to courses using an existing Learning Management System please contact elfh directly to express interest.

More information

Please select the following link for more information on how to use the elfh Hub.