September 12, 2014

When Perseverance Pays Off

Only a couple of years ago the PSS Postnatal Depression team were spending their time chasing the local and national press, trying their best to raise their profile and get some funding to continue their amazing work. Their success came at the 11th hour, when a phone call from the then Primary Care Trust told them their funding was secured for another 12 months. Much celebration ensued and with it Julie Rawlinson, the service’s manager decided that she never wanted to be in that position again.

Over the last 18 months Julie has worked with the team to apply for funding, extend service delivery, find a unique selling point for their service, raise their profile and tell their many success stories. Why? Because Julie and the team know how important this service is to the hundreds of women they work with directly in Liverpool each year and remotely through their Twitter, Facebook and website support groups.

At the beginning of August the team found out that they were one of only two services nationally to receive funding from the ‘PIP’ UK (Parent Infant Psychotherapy) fund. This early years intervention fund supports work that builds an attachment between children and their parents when and where issues exist. Before this announcement there had only ever been PIP funded projects in the South of England and for Julie’s team to get this money is an incredible achievement.

The team are always expanding on what they do, looking at how they can make it better, different, easier for service users to engage with. They have a committed team of volunteer supporters who work incredibly hard to make the service the success it is. The team also spend a lot of time looking at the issues from the point of view of people using the service. Within this they saw a gap for Post Natal Depression training in professionals and setup a training course which sees attendees from all over the UK attending this one day course to learn more from not only the practitioner team but also staff members like Kate Smith who share their own personal stories of PND. In October the team will take another step into the unknown delivering the UK’s first PND Conference in Liverpool. With speakers from Public Health, men’s specialists in male PND and a leading Clinical Psychologist on the panel the standard is certainly high.

“This just proves, as we keep telling our mums and dads…. you should never give up!”

Pauline McPartland, Team Leader