{"id":437407,"date":"2025-09-20T01:25:12","date_gmt":"2025-09-20T01:25:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/437407\/"},"modified":"2025-09-20T01:25:12","modified_gmt":"2025-09-20T01:25:12","slug":"minister-promises-change-to-mental-health-bill-keeping-mums-and-babies-together-in-most-instances","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/437407\/","title":{"rendered":"Minister promises change to mental health bill, keeping mums and babies together in most instances"},"content":{"rendered":"

She spoke to the Herald about the importance of keeping mothers and their babies together<\/a> and has become an advocate for more mother and baby units (MBUs), which allow mothers to be treated without being separated from their children.<\/p>\n

New Zealand only has two such units, one at Starship Children\u2019s Hospital in Auckland and the other in Christchurch. They are only for people who live locally, meaning those who do not live near an MBU may be treated in a general mental health inpatient facility, away from their child. <\/p>\n

The Government\u2019s mental health bill initially did not include a clause specifying the desire to keep mothers and babies together. <\/p>\n

This was the recommendation of the Health Committee, pushed by Labour\u2019s Ingrid Leary and Ayesha Verrall. <\/p>\n

Leary told the Herald the change meant \u201cthe law will now require that wherever women and their babies can be safely kept together they should be.<\/p>\n

\u201cLabour actively sought opportunities for improved protection for the human rights of people subject to the Act.\u201d <\/p>\n

\"LabourLabour MP Ingrid Leary pushed a change to allow mothers and babies to be kept together in the first instance. Photo \/ Mark Mitchell<\/p>\n

Doocey said the Government will pick that recommendation up in some form when the bill heads back to the House to complete its remaining stages. <\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019ve [the committee] read the submissions, they\u2019ve heard the stories, and some quite sad and tragic stories where mothers and babies have been separated, and you really have to question whether that is the right thing,\u201d Doocey said. <\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019ve made some recommendations about how mother and baby can stay together and I support that.\u201d <\/p>\n

Doocey said the proposed change \u201cmakes it more explicit\u201d that mothers and babies should be kept together. <\/p>\n

\u201cThat should be the first principle, can we keep mother and baby together?\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The challenge will be funding and building the units. In a 2023 report, the United Kingdom\u2019s Royal College of Psychiatrists estimated there is a need for about 0.4 MBU beds per 1000 deliveries.<\/p>\n

New Zealand records more than 55,000 live births a year.<\/p>\n

The Starship unit has just three beds. At a ratio of 0.4 beds per 1000 deliveries, it should have closer to eight beds just to serve Auckland, to say nothing of the rest of the country.<\/p>\n

Asked about whether funding and investment would accompany the mental health reforms to provide a consistent standard of care, Doocey said \u201cvery much so\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re committed to ensuring people get timely access to care. What I know as Mental Health Minister, is feedback people tell me is the mental health system is quite fragmented, and when you look at geographically across the country, it\u2019s quite variable.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re going to join up that fragmented system and provide a consistent level of care across the country,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

Doocey said the Government would \u201clook to see\u201d if MBUs could be \u201crolled out across the country\u201d, and \u201cpotentially\u201d building more of them.<\/p>\n

He said new mental health facilities currently under construction had more \u201cflexible spaces within them\u201d meaning \u201cyou can segment a part of it for when you have a mother and baby coming in\u201d. <\/p>\n

Another mother, Serra Clark told the Herald that after her baby was stillborn, she was unable to access the same postnatal support as other parents because she did not have a live baby in her care. <\/p>\n

A 2023 Health NZ stocktake of these services found them to be fragmented and patchy. <\/p>\n

A promise to provide a better, standardised care for bereaved parents was meant to arrive in March of this year, but has not. <\/p>\n

Doocey admitted problems.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe haven\u2019t got it right within the bereavement pathway,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

Doocey reiterated a $4.9 million investment in some regions such as Hawke\u2019s Bay and Wellington to lift their care for bereaved parents. <\/p>\n

Doocey said standardising care – a vision of the 2023 stocktake – was a goal.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s what I\u2019m focused on. The first part of that was the $4.9m, and we\u2019ll be looking to invest more into not only the bereaved pathway and maternal mental health as well,\u201d Doocey said. <\/p>\n

Doocey said fundamentally he agreed parents following a stillbirth should have access to the same quality care as parents who have living children. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe simple answer to that is \u2018yes\u2019,\u201d Doocey said. <\/p>\n

\u201cThere will be a different level of care required, and I have heard the heartbreaking stories where a mother [after still birth] has been put on a ward with other mothers and babies, and I don\u2019t think that should be happening.\u201d<\/p>\n

Alastair Taylor spoke to the Herald about losing his wife Kristin Taylor to suicide after she gave birth. <\/p>\n

He noted that some of the mental health facilities in which Kristin Taylor was treated were more penal than therapeutic. <\/p>\n

Doocey said this was an \u201caccurate observation of some of our facilities in NZ\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve visited them – some, quite candidly, look like prison cells or police cells,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt is reflective of a generation ago when they were the dominant views of mental health when people were locked up and asylums and other detaining facilities. Thankfully we\u2019ve come a long way in the field,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

Doocey said the new facilities the Government was opening were \u201cmore therapeutically designed\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople go into these facilities to get well. You can\u2019t go into a facility that doesn\u2019t enable that,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

Doocey would not give a date for when the last of the old penal-style facilities would close.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s an active programme as we roll out the new facilities,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"She spoke to the Herald about the importance of keeping mothers and their babies together and has become…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":437408,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4317],"tags":[3852,5176,590,5033,5027,56103,52157,96251,4923,1234,105,256,148173,148170,127053,148172,50449,5038,32505,218,5026,26586,13464,21130,148169,148171,24668,49087,68526,6093,32592,16,15,60698,9985],"class_list":{"0":"post-437407","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mental-health","8":"tag-act","9":"tag-and","10":"tag-babies","11":"tag-bill","12":"tag-change","13":"tag-changes","14":"tag-clear","15":"tag-doocey","16":"tag-first","17":"tag-government","18":"tag-health","19":"tag-in","20":"tag-instance","21":"tag-instances","22":"tag-keeping","23":"tag-kept","24":"tag-make","25":"tag-matt","26":"tag-mental","27":"tag-mental-health","28":"tag-minister","29":"tag-most","30":"tag-mothers","31":"tag-mums","32":"tag-promises","33":"tag-replacing","34":"tag-says","35":"tag-should","36":"tag-supports","37":"tag-to","38":"tag-together","39":"tag-uk","40":"tag-united-kingdom","41":"tag-which","42":"tag-will"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115234021251345428","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/437407","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=437407"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/437407\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/437408"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=437407"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=437407"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=437407"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}