Mother and Baby Unit (Inpatient)

The Mental Health Mother and Baby Unit (MBU) is a regional specialist mental health inpatient service. It can accommodate six mothers and their babies at any one time: the child must be under one year old. The unit provides specialist inpatient care and treatment for mental illness to mothers, whilst also supporting the development of the parenting role and relationship with their infant. This is an acute admissions unit with the ability to accept admissions 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Referrals can only be made by secondary care mental health teams and not directly from primary care services.

Please note:

The unit accepts psychiatric admissions from 32 weeks’ gestation until the end of the first postnatal year.
Patient information including a video tour is available: https://vimeo.com/239798213
The team includes input from a perinatal psychiatrist, junior doctors, regional perinatal nurse consultant, senior charge nurse, deputy charge nurses, mental health nurses, nursery nurses, a health visitor, occupational therapy, inpatient psychology, social worker and music therapist.
The MBU provides care for women/ birthing parents who are the main carers for their babies (up to the age of 1 year) and require psychiatric admission.
There is a Mother and Baby Unit Family Fund to help families visiting the unit.

Inpatient service:

Secondary care mental health services can contact the ward on 01506-524175 to discuss a referral for an inpatient admission.
Inpatient nurses cannot give clinical advice about management of outpatients.

Referral Guidelines
Resources and Links

Who to refer:

PLEASE NOTE THAT GPs SHOULD REFER TO THEIR LOCAL EMERGENCY PSYCHIATRIC TEAM – who can then arrange admission to the MBU when appropriate.

Admission criteria are lower than in General Adult Psychiatry (because of the vulnerability of the baby and the unpredictability of postnatal illness), so please have a low threshold for considering referral through urgent care pathways.

Recent physical examination should have been carried out to exclude physical illness.

Who not to refer:

The service does not have the facility to see women whose primary presenting problem is problematic alcohol or drug use.

Please note that GPs cannot refer patients directly to the Mother & Baby Unit and that can only be organised by secondary care.

How to refer:

To access an emergency same day psychiatric assessment:

Should the patient require an urgent/same day mental health assessment, please access local emergency services via usual mental health emergency pathways opens a new window
Consider how the patient is going to be transported for the assessment after a consideration of level of risk.

If you suspect post-partum psychosis and/or have concerns about the safety of the mother or baby, then we recommend a low threshold for arranging emergency assessment.