In this section...

  1. Adult community services
  2. Carers corner
  3. Children's services
  4. Community mental health services
  5. Community response to COVID-19
  6. Dementia and older people’s mental health
  7. Health for Homeless Service
  8. Learning disability services
  9. Medication
  10. Mental health crisis
  11. Personalised care planning
  12. Physiotherapy
  13. SilverCloud
  14. Spiritual and pastoral care
  15. Suicide Liaison Service
  16. Talking Therapies
  17. Transforming wound care
  18. Tuberculosis Service
  19. Useful information following a bereavement
  20. Video appointments
  21. Virtual wards
  22. Wheelchair Service

Contact us

Call 01872 246 820 or email the Perinatal Loss and Trauma Team.

The service is open Monday to Friday, 9am to 5pm. For general enquiries, appointment queries or to leave a message for a staff member, call our Administration Team on the number above.

If you have a concern that cannot wait until your next appointment, call our Administration Team who can arrange for a duty worker to contact you.

We are not a crisis service and cannot respond to urgent or emergency needs. See the useful contacts section below for other contacts to use in these situations.

Perinatal Loss and Trauma Team

The team provides specialist interventions to women and birthing people who are experiencing significant mental health difficulties resulting from loss or trauma connected to pregnancy, birth or the postnatal period.

Experiencing deeply unpleasant and distressing feelings in the immediate days and weeks after a trauma or loss is a natural reaction to extreme stress. Seeking support from family or friends, or from voluntary agencies (resources are available below) may be helpful during this time. 

Whilst we understand that this is a very difficult time, the team are unable to provide psychological interventions until at least 12 weeks have passed. This is to allow sufficient time to process what has happened before we can assess mental health needs.

Our team is made up of:

  • psychological therapists
  • specialist mental health practitioners
  • specialist midwifery

We work as part of the Specialist Perinatal Mental Health Team who also provide care for women and birthing people during the perinatal period.

Download our Perinatal Loss and Trauma Team information leaflet (PDF, 227 KB).

Who do we help?

We offer evidence-based psychological assessment and interventions to women and birthing people who are experiencing moderate to severe mental health difficulties due to difficult or traumatic maternity, pregnancy or birth experiences.

Some examples of our main areas of work include:

  • loss of a pregnancy or baby (including miscarriage, stillbirth or neonatal loss)
  • pregnancy or birth related trauma
  • severe fear or anxiety relating to pregnancy or birth (including tokophobia)

What do we offer?

Assessment

We provide a safe space to explore your experiences. We will try and help you to make sense of what has happened, and how this is impacting your mental health. We may decide on some goals or actions that might help you to move forward.

We will decide together whether our service is the most appropriate to meet your needs. If we are not the right service for you, we can help you think about options for alternative support.

If you are unsure whether it is the right time for you to consider psychological therapy, take a look at our making space in your life for psychological therapy leaflet (PDF, 70 KB).

Psychological interventions and therapy

We offer psychological therapies focussing on perinatal trauma and loss, such as:

  • cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT)
  • eye movement desensitisation and reprocessing (EMDR)
  • compassion focused therapy

Specialist midwifery

It may also be possible to involve our specialist midwife in your treatment plan if relevant and appropriate.

Referrals

We welcome referrals from 12 weeks following the loss or traumatic event.

You may self-refer online or speak to your GP and/or other health professional who can submit a referral for you.

Self-refer online (opens in new window)

We will do our best to respond to your referral within 4 weeks.

Referrals for professionals

Contact the Perinatal Mental Health Team urgently on 01872 246 820 if you are concerned about serious mental illness (such as post-partum psychosis) following a perinatal loss.

Useful contacts

For emotional help or someone to talk to

  • Samaritans, call 116 123.
  • There are additional helplines within the useful resources section below.

In crisis and/or at risk of harming yourself or others

  • Call NHS 111, and select option 2 for mental health help.

If life is at risk and you cannot keep yourself or others safe, call 999.

Useful information

General resources

  • Clear: Call 01872 261 147. Cornwall based charity offering care and support for people of all ages impacted by abuse and trauma. Their mission is to prevent, reduce and help children, young people and adults to heal from emotional trauma, in particular trauma that is linked to domestic abuse and sexual violence.
  • First Light: For anyone who is experiencing or has experienced domestic abuse or sexual violence.
  • Relate: Relationship support to help people strengthen their relationships, including counselling, mediation and single sessions to work on a specific issue. This can be done as a couple or individually. Website also contains other support and resources.
  • Survivor's Trust: Information and resources to support those affected by sexual violence or abuse.
  • Women's Aid: Support and resources for those experiencing domestic abuse
  • Women's Centre Cornwall: Specialist provider of services for women and girls (11 years and older) who have experienced any form of sexual violence, rape, sexual assault, childhood sexual abuse and/or domestic abuse at any point in their lives.

Perinatal loss

Ectopic pregnancy

  • Ectopic Pregnancy Trust: Provides support and information for people who have had or been affected by an ectopic pregnancy.

Support for loss at any stage

  • Aching arms: Run by bereaved parents. Call 07464 508 994 or email the Aching Arms support service. Provides an opportunity to talk to someone who has an understanding of what you're going through.
  • Child Bereavement UK: Offers a range of support to parents and the wider family when a baby or child of any age dies or is dying. Call 0800 028 8840, open 9am to 5pm, Monday to Friday. They also have live chat on their website.
  • Loss Collective: This website has lots of resources for perinatal loss or grief.
  • Mariposa Trust: Befrienders (who have been through baby loss), social media support, saying goodbye services (online) other support divisions. Growing you is for people pregnant after loss. Holding hope for people on more complicated fertility journeys. Waiting for you for people waiting to adopt. So cherished for those who discover their complex difficulties for baby during pregnancy.
  • Pregnancy Crisis Care: Offer free loss counselling, pregnancy support, online counselling and online groups. They are based in Plymouth but can offer online support to those in Cornwall, or can see you face to face if you can travel to Plymouth.
  • Sands: Offer a range of support anyone affected by pregnancy loss and the death of a baby to offer understanding and comfort. Call 0808 164 3332 or email Sands.
  • Tommy's: Provide support following baby loss, and linked website to support pregnancy after loss. The website has lots of helpful resources and they offer a range of different support options.

Infant loss

  • Lullaby Trust: Offer a range of bereavement support for those affected by sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) including a helpline (listening bereavement support service), email support, website information, befrienders, family days, and care of next infant support. Call 0808 802 6868, Monday to Friday, 10am to 2pm, and weekends 6pm to 10pm.
  • Luna's Fund: Neonatal and stillborn charity based in the south west (Plymouth and Cornwall). The charity offers support for those who have experienced baby loss. This includes Facebook support groups for those who have experienced baby loss, and a separate group for those who go on to become pregnant after baby loss. You can contact them via their website to ask for the links. Luna's Fund work with loss that has occurred anywhere between 24 weeks of pregnancy through to 28 days postnatally.
  • Teddy's Wish Baby Loss Charity: Offers a free bereavement counselling service to parents in the early stages of grief (up to 18 months post loss) who have lost a baby to stillbirth (after 24 weeks), neonatal death or SIDS.

Life limiting conditions

Miscarriage support (before 24 weeks of pregnancy)

  • Cradle: Miscarriage support before 24-weeks of pregnancy. They provide comfort bags and leaflets to hospital departments and provide peer support and online support groups (accessed via their website).
  • Miscarriage UK: Offer a range of support including a helpline, online support and lots of helpful resources and information leaflets for those affected by miscarriage, ectopic and molar pregnancy.

Multiple pregnancy

  • Twins Trust Bereavement Support: Offer a range of support for families who have lost one or more children from a multiple birth during pregnancy, birth or infancy.

Perinatal or birth trauma

  • Birth Trauma Association: Call 0203 621 6338. Lots of resources on their website including email and telephone with volunteer peer support workers with lived experience (including partner support).
  • Bliss: For babies born premature or unwell. They offer emotional support and practical information to parents who have a baby on a neonatal unit, or who have recently been discharged. Includes bereavement support where necessary.
  • Make Birth Better: Offer support to guide all people affected by traumatic experiences around birth and pregnancy. Information, resources, partner information, birth after trauma resources.
  • MASIC Foundation: Offer a range of support to those injured during childbirth, including 24-hour free birth injury support helpline, useful information on injuries, other useful resources on physical difficulties that can follow childbirth.
  • Peeps: Provide support to parents, families and friends of those affected by and raising awareness of hypoxic-ischaemic encephalopathy. Website includes information, buddy and peer support, counselling and therapy, and funding for equipment.

Pregnancy or reproduction related difficulties

  • Antenatal Results and Choices: Offer a helpline and information regarding antenatal screening and its consequences, including when a baby has a significant anomaly.
  • Bliss LGBT: Neonatal support for LGBTQIA+ families.
  • Donor Conception Network: Offer information, support and community to anyone considering or using an egg, sperm or embryo donor to create or expand their family.
  • LGBT Mummies: Aim to support LGBT+ women and people on the path to motherhood or parenthood. They offer online groups, including those to support people on assisted fertility journeys, during pregnancy, single parents, trans parents, non-binary parents, feeding support, stepparents, adoption, fostering, miscarriage and baby loss.

Termination for medical reasons

  • ARC: Non-directive information and support before, during and after antenatal screening. Provides specialized support for parents before, during, and after antenatal testing, including supporting those who have had a termination for medical reasons. Call their helpline on 0207 713 7486.
  • Sands: Offers dedicated termination for medical reasons community, email support and a helpline. Call 0808 164 3332.
  • TFMR Mamas: Provide free monthly support groups and private Facebook groups for parents and grandparents who have lost babies due to termination for medical reasons.

Partners

Although many of the other resources already listed on this page may also be useful for partners, we have included some partner specific resources below.

Perinatal loss

  • Compassionate Friends: Call 0345 123 2304 (open every day of the year, 10am to 4pm and 7pm to 10pm) They offer a range of support including a volunteer run helpline, online web chat, Facebook groups, online support groups, a community forum and peer support for bereaved partners.
  • Loss Collective support for partners: A dedicated website space for partners.

Perinatal trauma

Other partner resources

  • Dad Matters: YouTube channel, podcast and closed Facebook group offering support.
  • Dad Pad App: available via the Apple Store or Android Play Store.
  • Man Down: Support men's mental health in Cornwall.