Posted on: 3 May 2024
Hello. My name is Lisa Hadley and I am the West Yorkshire Maternal Mental Health Project Manager.
I am a Registered Adult Nurse with over 20 years of nursing experience within West Yorkshire. My first leadership role was in a fast-paced nursing environment requiring a great deal of operational oversight, but my passion has always been supporting staff and in turn improving patient experience. At the heart of my work is inclusivity and personalised care. The pandemic influenced my career path unexpectedly and I found my way into project management. In this role, I remain committed to ensuring that both service users and colleagues feel supported.
I am currently working in the West Yorkshire Mental Health, Learning Disability and Autism Programme Team. My role is to support the mobilisation and delivery of the new maternal mental health service PATHS (Positive Approaches to Reproductive Trauma and Healing), a West Yorkshire wide service, which will bring together maternity, mental health services and wider voluntary, community and social enterprise (VCSE) partners. The aim of the service is to fill the gap not already met by other services and provide support to women experiencing moderate to severe or complex mental health difficulties, including trauma relating to their birth experience, fear of birth itself (tokophobia), and trauma relating to pregnancy and baby loss.
Hearing about the inequalities that many people face and designing a service that focuses on removing barriers to access are important aspects of my work, and I am delighted to be joining the 2024 West Yorkshire Health Equity Fellowship Programme. My planned project will focus on how PATHS will capture and use data to demonstrate inclusivity and show that we are improving outcomes and reducing barriers to access within the service. Clear data capturing and ongoing evaluation will ensure that this new service is designed in a way that responds to and addresses the needs of the community.
This week is maternal mental health awareness week, a campaign to encourage discussions about mental health problems before, during and after pregnancy. The theme of world maternal mental health day (1 May) is ‘stronger together.’ One of the key messages is that women, as well as their family and friends, need to know the signs of maternal mental ill-health, that support is available and that they are not alone.
The week aims to raise public and professional awareness of perinatal mental health problems, change attitudes, advocate for the women and families that are impacted and help people access the support, information and care that they need to recover.
Due to my own lived experience around mental health, I am extremely passionate about reducing mental health stigma and promoting culture change within communities and the integrated care system. Up to one in five women and one in ten men are affected by mental health problems during pregnancy and the first year after birth. If mental health problems are left untreated, this can negatively impact the woman, the baby, and the wider family significantly. These potential long-lasting effects can be mitigated if symptoms are highlighted and treated promptly.
PATHS will launch in July initially focusing on offering treatment for birth-related trauma followed by baby loss and tokophobia (extreme fear of childbirth) pathways. The new team, made up of psychologists, psychological therapists and specialised midwives, is extremely passionate, aiming to improve the health and wellbeing of women and birthing parents and to improve outcomes for them, their infants, and their families.
Part of my role also includes reviewing the information and data on the West Yorkshire version of the DadPad© app. Now recommissioned until May 2025 and updated with a new Co-ParentPad booklet, DadPad© advise that one of the app benefits is helping dad to ‘recognise the signs of postnatal depression in both you and your partner and learn how to get early help.’ DadPad© assists health professionals to engage and build relationships with new dads and dads-to-be. It provides dad with the practical skills and information that he needs, which helps him become more confident in his new role - to not only feel included and involved as a parent, but also to become an engaged and active co-parent alongside baby’s mum.
If you would like to learn more about DadPad© or our developing PATHS service, please email me at lisa.
Thank you for reading and have a good bank holiday weekend,
Lisa.
What else has been happening this week?
Director of Public Health and Communities, Wakefield Council
Congratulations to Stephen Turnbull, who has been appointed as the permanent Director of Public Health and Communities at Wakefield Council.
Giving pupils a helping hand
Inclusion rather than exclusion in schools is the topic of this one and half minute panel video recorded at this year’s Adversity, Trauma and Resilience Knowledge Exchange. Rachel Forbes, Acting Public Health Consultant shares how a school in South Yorkshire set up an inclusion unit offering a range of different activities for young people to get involved with.
Visit the Knowledge Exchange 2024 website to see all the recordings from the three day event including Rachel Forbes and Rachel Westbourne’s ‘what’s love got to do with it’ presentation about protective factors, social love and system change. For more resources sign up to our Adversity, Trauma and Resilience digital portal or search ‘West Yorkshire trauma informed’.
NHS services over the bank holidays
People are urged to plan ahead for their healthcare needs in the run up to what is expected to be a really busy time for health and care services across the area.
With two bank holidays this month (6 and 27 May), it’s important that people are prepared and know how to get help if needed during this time, including checking that they or those they care for have enough medication to last through the holidays and ordering and collecting repeat prescriptions in plenty of time.
Although a number of pharmacy and GP services will be available over the bank holiday, many will be closed or have different opening times. Read more about NHS services this bank holiday on the website.
Gloves off campaign launched
Gloves off – a new West Yorkshire wide campaign launched yesterday (2 May) ahead of World Hand Hygiene Day 2024 on 5 May. The campaign aims to increase patient safety and supports the West Yorkshire ambition to tackle infection and antimicrobial resistance. It encourages health and care workers in West Yorkshire to stop using single use non-sterile plastic gloves when carrying out certain activities for non-infectious patients. The focus instead is on more effective hand hygiene before and after these activities.
The Gloves off web page is now live with a range of resources to download including a poster aimed at patients and the public, an email signature banner, a Teams background and social media graphics. Please use and share the information and resources internally and externally in any way you can to support the campaign.
Harnessing the Power of Communities newsletter published
The April edition of the West Yorkshire Power of Communities Newsletter contains useful information for and about the voluntary, community and social enterprise (VCSE) sector. In this edition, the West Yorkshire Staff Mental Health and Wellbeing Hub is looking for ‘storytellers’ from the VCSE sector who are willing to share their experience for their next Schwartz Round on the theme of Covid and Me: The invisible illness – To find out more email wyicb-bdc.
You can sign up to the newsletters for your local VCSE infrastructure organisation or find out more about them by visiting the websites below:
- Bradford District & Craven: Community Action Bradford & District, Bradford VCS Alliance and Community First Yorkshire
- Calderdale: Calderdale Voluntary & Community
- Kirklees: Third Sector Leaders Kirklees
- Leeds: Forum Central Leeds
- Wakefield: Nova Wakefield
West Yorkshire Dental Reference Group
The West Yorkshire Dental Reference Group had their third meeting this week to talk about what they're doing and what they want to do for dental care in the area. The group discussed specialist dental services for people who have complex health needs, learning disabilities, are homeless, seeking asylum, or are children in care.
Recent surveys from West Yorkshire show people want better oral health, quicker dental help, and easier ways to get dental care. The community dental services, which provide care at home for housebound people as well as residents living in care homes, are keen to hear views from our local communities and will be using networks like West Yorkshire Voice. Healthwatch is also looking for dental patients, dentists, GPs, parents, private dental users, people without an NHS dentist, educators and community members to join a Dental Services Working Group and help make a difference to how dentistry works in West Yorkshire.
For more information and to help shape the future of dentistry in West Yorkshire see the get involved pages on our website.
International Day of the Midwife
On Sunday 5 May midwives across the world will be celebrating International Day of the Midwife 2024. This year's theme - midwives: a vital climate solution – is at the core of COP28 and strategies to improve the health and status of women. As care providers and defenders of women’s sexual and reproductive health, midwives are key players in designing resilient health systems capable of withstanding the worst impacts of climate change, delivering environmentally sustainable health services, and empowering women to make decisions that benefit themselves, their families and the planet. Find out more from the Royal College of Midwives about events and activities taking place.
Parkrun to celebrate midwives and nurses
Celebrate International Day of the Midwife (5 May) and International Nurses Day (12 May) by taking part in your local parkrun event on
- Saturday 4 May
- Saturday 11 May
You can walk, jog, run or volunteer as we recognise the contribution and commitment of our midwives and nurses across the NHS, health and social care.
Find your local event on the parkrun website and register for free. Once registered, join the International Day of the Midwife group or International Nurses Day group.
Modern slavery statement published
Victims of modern slavery and human trafficking are men, women and children of all ages, ethnicities and nationalities who are exploited for criminal gain. It is estimated that more than 100,000 people in the UK are in modern slavery, according to slavery experts.
“The rising cost of living has almost certainly exacerbated and increased the risks of modern slavery and human trafficking” - UK National Crime Agency.
All businesses, including NHS West Yorkshire Integrated Care Board (ICB), play a key part in tackling modern slavery and ensuring that individuals are not placed into forced labour. The Modern Slavery Act 2015 requires certain businesses to set out the steps they have taken to ensure slavery is not taking place in their operations and supply chain. The ICB is committed to respecting, protecting, and advocating for the human rights of all individuals living or working in the ICB area, including our employees and supply chain workers. To show our commitment to this cause, we have published our modern slavery statement on our website.
This statement should be read in conjunction with our procurement and HR policies and procedures, which are relevant to preventing modern slavery from occurring within the ICB and our supply chains.
We will be exploring our system-wide approach to modern slavery at our July Partnership board.