6. Will the Minister make a statement on maternity services in Wales? OAQ(5)0079(HWS)

I thank the Member for the question. We aim to ensure pregnancy and childbirth is a safe and positive experience for every mother in Wales, wherever they live and whatever their circumstances.

Previously, the Cabinet Secretary suggested to me that Wales did not need a specialist mother and baby unit because such services were being delivered in the community, but on further investigation it appears to me that all but two health board areas in this country have no provision for specialist perinatal mental health care. Presumably, the Government, maybe even the Cabinet Secretary, conducted an impact assessment on the decision to close Wales’s last specialist mother and baby in-patient unit in 2013. Will the Cabinet Secretary make copies of that assessment available in the Assembly library?

I’m happy to provide further information on the decision not to commission in-patient provision in Cardiff. It really came from concerns about the ability to provide the right quality of care and the safety of care. This is a highly specialist area for a very small number of mothers, and our challenge was whether we could safely do that in Wales or not. What I’m not prepared to do is to commission care that is of poor quality and to simply highlight the fact that it’s local as opposed to the right quality of care. We’re currently commissioning that service either within the English system in the north-west of England or, indeed, in Bristol for south Wales. Most of the care, though, could and should be provided within the community; that’s the point that I’m trying to make. We need to improve the community provision of care, because we do recognise that for a range of mothers, there are mental health challenges that come after the birth of a child. So, it’s a real need that we recognise. That’s why we’re investing additional sums of money in community provision, but I’m more than happy to make available to Members the assessment that we undertook, or the assessment undertaken by the Welsh healthcare specialist commissioning group on why that service was decommissioned within Cardiff at the time, and the most recent assessment of need and ability to do that safely and to the right quality for mothers here in Wales.