East Midlands Perinatal Mental Health Collaborative

On 1 October 2023, the running of inpatient mental health services for pregnant women and new mothers in the East Midlands region became the responsibility of a new local partnership of healthcare providers.

The services – officially called perinatal mental health inpatient services – were previously overseen by NHS England Specialised Commissioning. Now, in line with changes set out in the NHS Long Term Plan, they will be overseen by a group of five NHS trusts and one private healthcare provider from the region, who are working together as the East Midlands Perinatal Mental Health Provider Collaborative.

The collaborative will maintain the high quality of perinatal services that are already provided in the East Midlands and seek to further improve the experience of service users and their families and carers. The collaborative is led by clinicians and is involving experts by experience to ensure that the service user’s voice is heard at every stage of their treatment and recovery.   

Although the collaborative will focus on the quality of care of the inpatient (hospital-based) perinatal mental health services, an important principle of the collaborative is that it supports and informs work across all perinatal mental health services. This is why all providers of perinatal mental health services in the East Midlands are partners in the collaborative, including those who only provide community perinatal services.

The collaborative is one of several launched by members of the East Midlands Mental Health, Learning Disabilities and Autism Alliance to ensure that specialised mental health services offer high-quality care to people in the region.