Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what steps his Department is taking to identify at an early stage new mothers who may be experiencing mental health problems.

Promoting good maternal and perinatal mental health is a key priority for this Government, as set out in the Five Year Forward View for Mental Health.

The Department is investing £365 million between 2015/16 to 2020/21 in perinatal mental health services, and NHS England is leading a transformation programme to ensure that by 2020/21 at least 30,000 more women each year are able to access evidence-based specialist mental health care during the perinatal period.

A key element of the transformation programme is to increase awareness and skills across the workforce, supporting better identification of perinatal mental illness, early intervention and consequently improved recovery rates.

In addition, the Department has published guidance which has led to the creation of over 570 perinatal mental health visitor champions. Their role is to support health visitors with the identification and management of anxiety, mild to moderate depression and other perinatal mental disorders, and to know when to refer on to a specialist.