The Sheffield Perinatal Mental Health Service provides specialist assessment and treatment to women and birthing people, and their families, living in Sheffield and struggling with their mental health or emotional wellbeing around the time of having a baby. 

The service is provided by Sheffield Health and Social care NHS Foundation Trust and is commissioned by the South Yorkshire Integrated Care System, and with partners, Light, a local peer support charity. Light provide peer support on behalf of the service. The service is registered with the Care Quality Commission at the our headquarters in Sheffield. 

We offer confidential, non-judgemental care and treatment to women and birthing people experiencing mental health difficulties who are either planning to have a baby, are already pregnant or who have given birth in the last 12 months. 

You can find out more about the service and the support we offer by taking a look at our service leaflet. 

How do I access the service?

To access the service you must be referred by someone, usually a health or social care professional working in Sheffield. This could be your GP, community mental health team, midwife, health visitor or others. 

If you’d like to make a referral, please complete this referral form and email it to the team:  sct-ctr.sheffieldperinatalmentalhealthservice@nhs.net

Referral criteria can be found at the back of the referral form. If you would like to discuss a potential referral with the team or ask for any advice, please contact us on the above number. 
 

Information for referrers and service users

Referral and triage

Once we receive a referral for a service user, we will attempt to contact them as soon as we can, based on urgency. This is usually via a phone call and the phone number will appear on the phone as a withheld number. We may speak to the referrer or other involved services, review known information, and collate all of this to help us decide whether we are a suitable service for this referral. If we think we might be, we will offer the service user an initial assessment. A letter will be sent to the service user’s address with the details of this assessment, and the letter will also include information such as:

Wait times

The target wait times for assessment can be found on the referral form. Our current average wait times as of February 2024, are:

  • Routine assessment – six weeks
  • Urgent assessment – one - two weeks
  • Emergency assessment – four hours
  • Wait for allocation of a named worker – within a week of initial assessment (for everyone for whom the service is deemed to be appropriate).
  • Wait for psychological / therapies assessment (if indicated) – within four weeks of initial assessment.
  • Wait for psychological / therapies treatment – within four weeks of psychological assessment.
  • Wait for appointment with Psychiatrist – six weeks (urgent work is responded to as needed). 

Once an agreement has been reached that the service is suitable for the person referred, a named worker will help draw up a plan of care between the service and the service user. This may involve internal referral to different professionals such as therapists, occupational therapists, support workers, community nursery nurses, doctors, and others. There may be waits for some of these offers, but we aim to keep these as short as possible and they are not usually more than around a month. A written copy of this plan will be shared with the service user and their chosen carers/relatives, as well as with other involved professionals as appropriate. 

Confidentiality, privacy and your information

You can find details about service user rights and the processes we use in our organisation here:

Service users will be asked whether they wish their partner, carer or chosen other(s) to receive copies of letters about their care and treatment. The wishes of service users will be recorded regarding their preferences for sharing their information and this can be reviewed regularly with them. 

Carers, partners and others

We have a carers' pack which aims to support the carers, partners, families etc of any service user open to our service. Please ask a member of the team for a carers' pack. 

How to give feedback on the service

  • Service users, carers/relatives and professionals are all invited to give feedback on the service and can do so here.
  • Professionals are requested to contact the service and ask for a feedback form, which will be sent out. It can be sent back confidentially if helpful. 
  • You can also give anonymous feedback via a national feedback form managed by the Royal College of Psychiatrists. The feedback is given to the service, who review it and take action to make improvements when needed. 
  • We want you to share honest feedback about our services. Good or bad we want to hear what you think. 
  • You can choose how much detail you want to go into about your personal story, but if there’s anything we could improve on we want to know.
royal college of psychiatrists accreditation

Accreditation

The Sheffield Perinatal Mental Health service is currently accredited by the Royal College of Psychiatrists until January 2027.