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We are recruiting participants from NHS services and children's centres, with the help of clinicians and staff members working in these services. The study will take place across England.
In the community, the main types of care available for pregnant and postnatal women with mental health problems are:
- Care solely from primary care or general community mental health services, with no specialist perinatal input.
- Care that includes input from a maternity liaison psychiatry service or from a community perinatal mental health service, where these services provide specialist support but do not take over full responsibility for women's care.
- A specialised perinatal community team which takes full responsibility for care.
The main available types of service provision for acute severe illnesses are:
- Mother and Baby Units
- Acute general wards
- Crisis Resolution Teams
We are sampling women who have experienced these different care configurations.
Recruitment of mothers to the study will take place around 6-9 months post-partum. We will sample women living in metropolitan, smaller city or town, and rural environments, ensuring representation of a range of age groups, ethnic and socio-demographic backgrounds, types of mental health problems, and experiences of access to perinatal services and context of care. We will aim to include mothers who have experienced child protection proceedings and those who are no longer their child's main carer, alongside those who have retained a principal parenting role.
In total we are planning to speak to 40 mothers and 20 significant others. We are also planning to carry out six focus groups with clinicians, and to interview 6-10 commissioners.