THE Maternal Mental Health Alliance’s report that in seven of 14 Scottish health boards women have no access to specialist perinatal services, with only Glasgow meeting standards, is disquieting (“Mental health care lacking”, The Herald, April 19). It raises serious concerns for women suffering mental disorder perinatally, but also for our next generation, given that these problems have lifelong effects on the well-being of children. They may also, tragically, have fatal consequences for mothers and babies. But the importance of perinatal service development has been recognised for years and this report raises concerns about the failure of the NHS to develop services, and its governance at the highest level.
In NHS Lothian a perinatal service was established 10 years ago with a remit to develop services for Lothian and partner health boards. As the specialist consultant I attempted to raise concerns with senior management when it became clear to me that the “specialist” service was seriously deficient. It is my opinion that minimising “reputational damage” to the board and “productivity” was a greater priority than quality of services, or problems in developing them. I escalated these concerns to members of the NHS executive and successive health secretaries, but they simply referred them back to the very health board about which I had raised concerns.
Several adverse incidents and fatalities have since occurred around the perinatal service in Lothian, and must also be occurring across Scotland.
This failure of perinatal service provision is, sadly, not surprising given the deeper endemic problem of NHS executive and Government preoccupations with “throughput”, sound-bites, and a toxic culture of “new public management” that rides roughshod over the experience and expertise of front-line staff. There is a serious lack of managerial accountability and transparency and we still lack any genuinely independent regulatory body. It remains difficult and dangerous for front-line staff to raise concerns about services. These issues are documented in submissions (online) to the Holyrood Health Committee inquiry on NHS governance. The public should be aware why services are deficient and of the underlying managerial and political causes. These require serious scrutiny, accountability and action.
(Dr) Jane Hamilton (Consultant Psychiatrist), c/o Humber Foundation and Teaching Trust, Willerby Hill, Beverley Road,
Willerby, Hull.
SCOTTISH Labour Leader Richard Leonard has been calling for the resignation of Health Secretary Shona Robison in the wake of the NHS Tayside failures. I direct him to NHS Wales, run by Labour, which is reportedly the worst-performing in the UK. Scotland’s NHS has 14 health boards and everyone is fully aware of the constraints and pressures those boards are under on a daily basis.
Health is a massive portfolio which Ms Robison has carried for more than three years and is currently overseeing the ground-breaking integration of health and social care, a massive remit. During her tenure the health budget has risen substantially and we have seen many positives in the continuation of free prescriptions, lifting of the pay freeze and all NHS workers earning the Living Wage and, most importantly, no privatisation of our NHS services. To those calling for Ms Robison to resign, I would say calm down, take a look at the positives our health service delivers on a daily basis.
Catriona C Clark,
52 Hawthorn Drive,
Banknock, Falkirk.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel