“…they make you feel extremely proud and remind you that it’s worth it.”
Carla Mobear is the Operational Manager for Specialist Perinatal Services at GMMH. As the service is still developing, Carla is very much involved in developing pathways and collaborating with other organisations to ensure our service continues to provide the best and right support.
“To be honest, I think the role chose me! I happened to do a couple of bank shifts on the Mother and Baby Unit seventeen years ago. A job came up and I thought, why not. Since then, I have focused my career on perinatal mental health.
I have tried to leave a couple of times, but I just always find myself back in perinatal services.”
My experience studying
“I loved every minute of my course! I didn’t have any qualifications before this so had do jump through a lot of hoops to prove I was able to study at diploma level.”
“My course didn’t even mention perinatal mental health as a career option. I never even knew the speciality was available until I worked on the mother and baby unit.”
My role
“As the Specialist perinatal service is still developing, I am fortunate enough to be involved in a lot of service development, developing pathways and collaborating with other agencies and service to make sure there is a good understanding of our service and how together we can ensure positive outcomes for women and people in the perinatal period. At the moment, I am focusing on writing job descriptions and recruiting staff with amazing skills and great values.”
“Periodically I attend MDT meetings and ward rounds to keep in the loop with my clinical skills. I also offer clinical and line management supervision to several staff. I review performance and together with the leadership team think about how we can improve the quality of care we provide.”
“I have the day-to-day oversight of the budget which can be daunting because I can’t manage a budget at home! And I answer a lot of emails!”
“The best thing about this job is the people, of course! They have such strong values and are very passionate about women’s health and people they provide care to. I never stop being amazed at how much the team are committed to the service.”
“Perinatal mental health is unique because there is lots of evidence to help us identify women and people who are at risk of developing mental health difficulties in the perinatal period. So, we can be proactive in identifying those at risk and adapting our approach to individual family needs to prevent women becoming unwell. There isn’t, as far as I am aware, any other area of mental health where you have an opportunity to do that.”
“In addition to that, you can’t ignore the impact our service has on child development and the growing evidence which is building around the impact our work has on the next generation of adults. They’re more likely to have good mental health and less likely to need mental health services because of the support we put in place during their early years.”
“The inequalities and expectations that women and mothers face every day in healthcare for some reason is always something I find surprising. Sadly, this job has over the years really highlighted how much there is a lack of understanding about how time sensitive women health and child safeguarding needs to be to ensure the best outcomes for families. It never ceases to amaze me.”
“Families are complex, and we get to listen to a lot traumatic and heart breaking life experience about child safeguarding, domestic violence and abuse that can really take its toll on you. But once you see and hear the difference the service has made to someone family you forget all the bad stuff.
Our service gets lots of thank you cards from families, and they make you feel extremely proud and remind you that it’s worth it.
