Perinatal mental health experiences of our diverse borough
In the past year one of our priorities has been perinatal mental health (perinatal refers to the time, usually a number of weeks, immediately before and after birth). We have been focused on making sure we hear from birthing parents from a range of ethnic backgrounds as these voices were less represented in our previous research on this topic.
We used semi-structured interview questions that were developed by Healthwatch England to understand people's experiences. Thirteen birthing parents, who had given birth since 2020 and lived in the borough of Wandsworth, were interviewed. The ethnicities of those interviewed included population groups from Africa, the Caribbean, Middle East, South Asia and South America.
You can read more about what we did and how we did it in our full report.
Our full report describes in more detail some key themes in what could ensure more positive experiences of maintaining mental health and emotional wellbeing for new parents.
Here is a summary of our key findings and recommendations:
- Promoting staff interactions that provide support to foster discussions on emotional wellbeing via encouragement and 'checking in' and signposting, information in accessible formats/languages before birth, encouraging people to build resiliance and staff training.
- Language barriers: interpreting and communication: via a review of access to interpreters and training and awareness for staff about how to make adjustments for people for whom English is a second language.
- Breastfeeding: consider increasing access to breastfeeding support that supports mental health.
- Community and extended networks: normalising talking about mental health in communities, promoting involvement of families, friends and partners, considering community health champions.
- Support from non-medical services: creating social spaces, strengthening connections between service staff and the community and developing web-based sign-posting.
- Housing: improving understand of housing issues and how they impact mental health and improving accessibility to information about navigating housing services and advice.
What's next?
We've already spoken to people who work in health and social care about the experiences people shared with us. We will be continuing to press for improvements and following up with them about how they could implement the recommendations.
We also have a webpage about support for parents with emotional wellbeing here.
Read our full report
To hear more about what people told us and the specifics of our recommendations you can read our report by downloading it below.
