Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he is taking to increase the uptake of perinatal mental health services among ethnic minority communities.

The National Health Service is committed to addressing unwarranted variation and health inequalities and promoting equality, including for Perinatal Mental Health services. This includes supporting services to ensure appropriate access for Black, Asian and minority ethnic communities, to ensure that women from all backgrounds who need specialist Perinatal Mental Health support receive it.

NHS England’s Perinatal Mental Health programme is taking steps to ensure: training and development are available to ensure the workforce is culturally competent, diverse and representative of communities; equalities ambitions are embedded into strategic plans and governance arrangements; coproduction is embedded in service design, development and governance structures; regions and local health systems are supported to develop and achieve equality ambitions for their populations; data is available to understand trends in inequality in access, experience and outcomes to specialist Perinatal Mental Health services; third sector groups and the voluntary, community and social enterprise sectors are included to support groups at risk of health inequalities.

In addition, NHS England published its first Advancing Mental Health Equalities Strategy in October 2020, laying out plans for addressing inequalities in access, experience and outcomes in mental health care.