Today’s admission from Minister for Health Jacquie Petrusma that the Liberals’ planned move of the Mother Baby Unit to St. Johns Park will see the service staffed by Child Health and Parenting Services is a massive broken promise.

CHAPS staff do an amazing job helping new parents in the community, however it is not in their scope of practice to provide a full Mother Baby Unit model of care service.

A Mother Baby Unit model of care is a specialty service, providing integrated care that focuses on the mental and physical health needs of mothers and their babies. There are countless numbers of women who say their stay at a Mother Baby Unit saved their life.

The Minister confirmed today that mothers with mental health concerns would be sent by the new CHAPS service to the Royal Hobart Hospital. This would see new mums either in the general hospital or the Psychiatric ward, without their baby with them and not receiving the care they need  – an integrated mother baby unit service – when they need it most.

Given this, it is completely disingenuous for the Liberals to maintain that what they are proposing at St John’s Park is a Mother Baby Unit at all.

The Minister has demonstrated the Rockliff Minority Government either does not understand or does not care about the crucial and irreplaceable services that Mother Baby Units provide.  

Is the real reason for this broken promise, that the budget is so broken that the government cannot afford to continue to provide a Mother Baby Unit?

What does this decision mean for staff currently providing this service at the Royal Hobart Hospital?

Ella Haddad MP
Shadow Minister for Health