Specialist Maternal Mental Health Midwife

This is an exciting opportunity for an innovative role within the new Perinatal Trauma and Loss Service. The service will aim to integrate maternity, reproductive health and psychological therapy for women experiencing mental health difficulties arising from their maternity experience including trauma and loss.
This service will be based alongside the Perinatal Mental Health Team and work closely with a Principal Clinical Psychologist.
This post will be based in Peterborough and covering Peterborough, Huntingdon and Wisbech, with operational links to the local maternity hospitals in Peterborough and Huntingdon. The post-holder will help to assess patients who are experiencing severe mental health difficulties because of perinatal loss and trauma. They will be supported to deliver therapeutic interventions and groups, particularly for those women who go on to become pregnant again. They will support with birth planning and work closely with local midwifery teams to support the delivery of trauma-informed care. They will provide training and support to maternity services.
The Specialist Midwife will support the delivery of this specialist service, under the supervision of a Principal and Consultant Clinical Psychologist. The Specialist Midwife will support triaging and assessment of mental health difficulties in the context of perinatal trauma and loss. With supervision and training, they will monitor and manage mental health and safeguarding risk, as well as delivering psychologically informed interventions to individuals or groups. Where a patient becomes pregnant again, they will lead on birth planning and liaise closely with maternity services to ensure trauma informed care and support.
They will also provide relevant training and support to maternity and other partner agencies, promoting the integration of services to improve the experience of women with severe mental health difficulties. The post holder will work within professional guidelines and exercise responsibility for their caseload following appropriate governance procedures.
Cambridgeshire and Peterborough NHS Foundation Trust is a health and social care organisation dedicated to providing high-quality care with compassion to improve the health and wellbeing of the people we care for, as well as supporting and empowering them to lead a fulfilling life.
Our clinical teams deliver many NHS services, not only via inpatient and primary care settings, but also within the community. These services include children's, adult and older people's mental health, forensic and specialist mental health, learning disabilities, primary care and liaison psychiatry, substance misuse, social care, research and development.
Please refer to the attached job description and person specification for full details of responsibilities.
- With support and training, deliver mental health assessments with a focus on perinatal loss and trauma. Using clinical supervision, demonstrate an ability to think psychologically to make sense of someone’s difficulties.
- With support and training, deliver psychologically informed and evidence-based interventions to improve mental health. Where patients are pregnant again, deliver individual and/or group interventions with a view to supporting them through their pregnancy and birth. This will include developing birth plans alongside maternity care.
- Offer support and guidance to families of women experiencing significant mental illness.
- Assess, monitor and respond to mental health and safeguarding risk, ensuring timely risk assessments, care planning and safety planning, escalating concerns and making appropriate referrals as needed.
- Draw on strong reflective capacity to consider your own emotional responses to your clinical work and make use of clinical supervision to support your own learning and well-being.
- Promote the integration of services to improve services for women with severe perinatal trauma, loss or tokophobia.
- Work across a variety of settings to deliver care (including, but not limited to, home addresses, children’s centres, healthcare sites).
- Develop and deliver training for external and internal staff alongside qualified psychologists.
- Identify areas of service and quality improvement, and work with the relevant professionals and operational staff to implement and evaluate these.
- Support the implementation of current and new guidelines and standards relating to MMHS.
- Ensure the service is acting in an equitable manner, respecting different ethnic, cultural and religious beliefs across all aspects of service.