Part of 2. 2. Questions to the Cabinet Secretary for Health, Well-being and Sport – in the Senedd at 2:57 pm on 7 December 2016.
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.