Number of women in contact with specialist community perinatal mental health services as a proportion of total births
This chart shows the number of women in contact with specialist community perinatal mental health services reported as a proportion of total births, reported on a rolling annual period. The figures can be examined from a national perspective or ICB level. You can also compare data with up to five other areas.
Exploring the charts: To explore ICBs, click on the tab and then click in the box to select different areas. We should expect the lines to trend upwards over time as perinatal mental health services have an expanded capacity.
Policy context
The Five Year Forward View for Mental Health contained the commitment to enable 30,000 more women each year to access evidence-based specialist perinatal mental health treatment by 2020/21. This was against a baseline estimate of 12,000 women accessing such treatment in 2014/15. The NHS Long Term Plan then increased this ambition to 35,000 above the baseline number in 2020/21, 45,000 in 2021/22 and 54,000 in 2022/23 and 2023/24.
There is no formal standard in place for this indicator, however NHS England has previously set an expectation that those in contact with services would represent at least 4.5% of births in 2019/20 and at least 7.1% in 2020/21 (percentages calculated using 2016 Office for National Statistics data on births, as previously used by NHS England in its Mental Health Dashboard). If continued, the expectation would be 10.0% for 2022/23 and 2023/24.
