Wednesday, 20 March 2024

Maternal and child health services

Georgie CROZIER (Southern Metropolitan) (17:57): (800) My adjournment matter this evening is for the attention of the Minister for Health. Again I raise the issue and the very important aspect around maternal and child health nurses – the issues around screening that have been raised in recent weeks, but also the lack of investment and lack of action by the government.

Back in 2018 this Parliament undertook an inquiry into this very issue, and it found that there were severe workforce shortages. It recommended that the government get on and look at this issue to ensure that there was proper coverage for maternal and child health nurses to be able to undertake the very vital work that they do. Now, we know that through COVID many vulnerable women and their families and their babies missed out on getting those appointments and checks by those experienced nurses.

A few weeks ago the government released their report into perinatal mental health screening approaches. Again it highlighted the issues that are lacking, particularly around mental health checks too. I made this point in question time today around the number of women that are severely affected by mental health aspects. Five years ago the Royal Commission into Victoria’s Mental Health System identified a need to review the approaches into perinatal mental health screening, and yet we are still here looking at what needs to be done.

The government have released a bit of information after that independent report that they had undertaken, which found one in four people experienced mental ill health throughout the perinatal period and 70 per cent of people who experienced mental ill health before the birth of their child also experienced mental ill health after the birth. I mean, these figures are staggering, and they are really concerning because there are so many of these women missing out. I mean, if they are having that impact – these checks are there to detect problems and to prevent problems from arising. That 70 per cent of people who experienced mental ill health are going to go on and experience it after the birth is very alarming. It goes on to talk about:

There is inconsistent perinatal mental health screening practice across Victoria …

…

Data from 81 –

maternal and child health services –

… indicates that one in two people are screened at least once after birth using the … secondary screen postnatally).

This, again, is not good enough.

There are currently no state guidelines for screening during pregnancy, and –

maternal and child health guidelines –

… do not fully align with the national guidelines.

So the question I ask is: what action is the government taking to address those national guidelines and further support this vulnerable cohort?