MENTAL health chiefs in Bradford have secured NHS England funding to develop a service for pregnant women and new mums.

Bradford District Care NHS Foundation Trust says it already has a successful scheme in place to improve mental health care for those women but says the new funding means it will be able to do even more.

Simon Long, deputy director of Mental Health Acute and Community Services at Bradford District Care NHS Foundation Trust, said: “The Trust has recognised that services need to be improved to meet the needs of women for some time.

“We will be developing a dedicated team that will give women direct access to specialists when needed, and also enhance practice across other services as the team are able to provide specialist advice to other health workers.”

Lisa Milne, Perinatal Mental Health Lead and Lead Psychological Therapist at the Trust, added: “We have developed two types of training for health visitors, midwives, mental health practitioners and GPs. One is to help spot the signs of perinatal mental health problems and the other looks at the parent and infant relationship.

“Our rolling programme of training has benefited staff in all services and raises awareness of the care that women need as well as building skills for practitioners to help them assess, discuss and provide interventions to support families.”

Perinatal community mental health services provide specialist care for women with high risk of severe mental health problems, such as schizophrenia or psychosis, during pregnancy and up to the child being one year old.

Last month the Telegraph & Argus reported how a £1.6 million cutting-edge mental health facility for women in Bradford had shut less than 18 months after it opened because of a lack of patients.

Bradford MPs and councillors were demanding answers, with one senior councillor branding it “a big waste of money”.

Daisy Hill Intensive Therapy Centre (DHITC), at the Care Trust’s Lynfield Mount hospital, designed to treat women with severe and complex mental health problems, was originally hailed as the first facility of its kind in the country, offering a treatment therapy programme unrivalled in the UK.

But the T&A discovered the state-of-the-art facility, within the grounds of Lynfield Mount, struggled to fill beds from the start.

The Trust was asked by the T&A how much funding it had to develop the perinatal scheme but there was no response and there was no comment on whether the disused DHITC might be made use of.