BELFAST — Northern Ireland Health Minister Mike Nesbitt announced that a permanent regional mother and baby unit providing specialist inpatient mental health care will be built at Belfast City Hospital, with a design team to be appointed immediately. The facility is expected to open no later than 2028/29.

About £400,000 has been ringfenced from the Department of Health's building budget for the project. Prior to the current project, no funding had been secured for a mother and baby unit in Northern Ireland, although seven health ministers had supported the idea.

Nesbitt said interim and temporary facilities previously discussed were not cost effective. He said a scoping exercise confirmed that alternative options, including a dedicated hospital ward, would not deliver a materially shorter timeline or better value for money or offer the same level of safety and assurance for mothers and babies. During a Stormont debate in November, he said a mother and baby unit had been delayed and he could not guarantee funding at that time.

Each year, about 100 women in Northern Ireland are admitted to adult psychiatric wards for care without their babies. Before the project, Northern Ireland had no mother and baby unit, with mothers experiencing severe postpartum mental health issues separated from their babies and treated in facilities such as Holywell Psychiatric Hospital alongside other mental health patients. The rest of the UK has 22 mother and baby units.

Mothers and families have campaigned for decades for a dedicated unit where women are treated alongside their babies rather than in a general psychiatric ward. Women who develop postpartum psychosis often experience hallucinations, delusions and restlessness, and if left untreated, may harm themselves and their babies.

Liz Morrison, a representative of Action on Postpartum Psychosis, said she was pleased that the unit is expected to open by 2028/29. The Royal College of Psychiatrists in Northern Ireland said careful consideration should be given to ensuring the unit can open safely with adequate resources and staffing in place.

Orlaith Quinn, 33, died by suicide in October 2018, about 48 hours after the birth of her third child. Her body was found in the grounds of the Jubilee Maternity Hospital in Belfast that same month. In May 2022, a coroner found that her death was foreseeable and preventable.