Hi, I’m Jo the South West Coordinator for the Hearts and Minds Partnership. The Partnership is a collaboration between three well established perinatal mental charities in England, Bluebell Care (South West), Acacia Family Support (West Midlands) and Smile Group (North West). 

An aim of the project, which is funded for three years by the Lottery, is to develop a digital map highlighting local, safe, community-led perinatal mental health services in England. 

As well as the online map, another focus for the Partnership will be to support and connect grassroots organisations so that they can share and learn best practice from each other. Another key part of the project will be to eventually develop bespoke training specifically tailored to support this sector.

At the moment we are busy working hard behind the scenes getting the project off the ground. There’s lots of work to be done with our web developers helping them make the map as user friendly, and interactive as it can be. As well as lots of really interesting conversations happening with various groups telling us all about the incredible work they are already doing supporting families in the perinatal period. 

We hope to launch the online map during the course of 2021 giving both parents and clinicians a much-needed tool to more easily locate community-led mental health support. This will be especially important for those families who don’t meet the high thresholds for specialist perinatal mental health services and don’t know where to turn.

If you’d like to follow our journey do keep an eye on our website: www.heartsandmindspartnership.org and give us a follow on social media Instagram @hmpartnership, Twitter @hmpartnership