Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what steps he is taking to ensure that new mothers' mental health problems are identified as early as possible.
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.