· The process for a woman who needs psychological therapy support to access it

Psychological Therapy is accessed via other professionals in the Perinatal Mental Health Team, who request advice or ask for Dr Stella Swift, the Clinical Psychologist, to become involved. The practice is that referrals are made via conversation with this individual, which enables her to do a number of things including assessment of suitability and appropriateness of the referral, possibly signpost to other Cwm Taf services or agencies, possibly offer advice and consultation to the staff member, possibly arrange to meet the client with the staff member and / or possibly offer a series of psychology sessions.

For those women who access other Cwm Taf services for a psychological therapy such as courses or 1: 1 work, a referral is made by the Perinatal Mental Health Team and a conversation is usually made with the receiving team to discuss the appropriate treatment. In some circumstances a jOint appointment is made between the women, the Perinatal Team and Community Mental Health Team (CMHT).

· Waiting times for access to psychological therapy services

Most perinatal clients receive a psychological therapy in one of our Primary Care Mental Health Teams and under the Mental Health Measure we would aim to deliver treatments within 28 days of assessment.

With regards to those women who receive a psychological therapy within the Perinatal Team, psychology does not operate a waiting list within the Perinatal Mental Health Team. Instead, staff in the Perinatal Team know that Dr Swift has a (limited) number of psychological therapy slots that they can refer for. In consultation with the member of staff (as the referrer), Dr Swift then advises about access to psychology in groups or 1: 1 within Primary Care or the CMHT and likely wait times. For example, a perinatal MH client may be living anywhere within the UHB so could potentially access a psychologically informed therapeutic group in their local area. The psychologist also offers a consultation meeting once a month to prioritise perinatal requests.

When Dr Swift is on leave, urgent requests will of course be managed by an appropriate consultant psychologist member of the team.

· The number of individual and group perinatal clinical psychological sessions provided by your Health Board weekly.

Dr Swift has one session per week, which she consolidates to offer one day a fortnight. On that day, she offers four individual appointments, plus a team consultation session.

· A breakdown of the proportion of time spent weekly by each of your psychologists on providing 1: 1 and group sessions:

We provide 1 to 1 sessions for 4 hours per week including travel time for home visits -so just over 10.5% of the week's activity. We do not currently offer group sessions.

I hope that this information answers your questions, I would be happy to clarify or provide more information as needed.