Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what recent assessment has he made of the adequacy of the support available for parents of premature children.

NHS England will invest an additional £127 million in maternity services. Of this, approximately £45 million will be available to hospitals over the next three years to increase the number of neonatal cots in England to ensure high quality care in the most appropriate clinical setting.

The NHS Long Term Plan commits to improve access to and quality of perinatal mental health care for mothers and their partners. Mental health services in England will be expanded to include new mental health ‘hubs’ for mothers, including those with premature children. The ‘Neonatal Critical Care Transformation Review’, published in 2019, set out a vision for high quality neonatal care which will be networked across England to improve outcomes for families and provide safe expert care close to home.