<p>Inpatient Perinatal Mental Health Facilities</p>

Part of 1. 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 2:18 pm on 28 March 2017.

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Photo of Carwyn Jones Carwyn Jones Labour 2:18, 28 March 2017

Can I just explain the situation? In the last three years, fewer than five women have been admitted to an inpatient unit in Wales. That’s the issue. The problem then, of course, is that you cannot run a specialist unit on those numbers. It can’t be done. No accrediting body will allow you to run a specialist unit on that basis. It can’t be a specialist unit with those numbers. I agree with him about the seriousness of the condition. I agree with him about not separating mothers from babies, which is why we put the extra funding into community-based perinatal mental health services to ensure that people don’t have to be inpatients. So, rather than focusing on the hospital, it is focusing on the individual, making sure they have support in the community, rather than trying to keep a service going that clearly wasn’t being particularly well used—and, as a result of that, there was a problem in terms of it continuing to be a specialist unit.