Back in May, as part of Mental Health Awareness Week, our very own Maternal Mental Health Manager Cathy launched her own fundraiser- moving 10km every day throughout the week, to raise funds for a brand new running buggy for the Florence House Mother and Baby Unit.

Kit like this is absolutely vital in supporting mothers struggling with their mental health to be able to engage in physical activity with their babies. Last week we were delighted to be able to deliver the buggy to the In-Patient Mother and Baby Unit in Dorset as well as catch up with the wonderful team who run the unit.

Cathy Says: “It has been such a pleasure to donate the jogging buggy to Florence House Mother and Baby Unit following my fundraiser for Maternal Mental Health Awareness Week.  The day I visited Florence House was also the first day of the 12-week Somatic Wellbeing classes pilot.  Sport in Mind have a vision to provide weekly classes to as many Mother and Baby Units as possible and work with the MBUs to capture the impact of these classes on women’s mental wellbeing.  We hope to secure funding so we can provide these much needed opportunities to as many women within Mother and Baby in-patient Units suffering serious mental illness”. 

 

Verity Eleftheriou, Clinical Lead at Florence House said: "We would like to say a huge thank you to Sport in Mind for the donation of a jogging buggy to our mother and baby unit. The buggy will really help the mothers that use our service to get out with their babies more and enable them to either take up jogging or revisit a hobby that they might already have. It  also means we can promote exercise as a form of therapeutic intervention for our ladies and their babies and they can learn the importance of keeping a healthy body and mind. It is a welcome new addition to our unit and we hope to be very well used. Thank you again."  

Further to the donation of the buggy, Sport in Mind are working with Dorset Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust and Florence House with the launch of a12 week pilot programme to provide in-patient yoga sessions to support mothers suffering with severe mental illness.

Learnings from this programme will help inform our work to support more patients with this service in more MBU's across the country.

For further information about Sport in Mind's Pre and Post Natal, and in-patient work, please contact [email protected] or visit our Pregnancy and Post Natal section of the website