Perinatal

Many aspects of our work spans maternity and neonatal services, including if babies need specialist neonatal care following birth. This section provides information about those perinatal work streams.

National Pregnancy Resources for Parents

Public Health Scotland (PHS) owns the national suite of NHS health information resources for pregnancy and early parenting in Scotland. Local Health Information Resource Services (HIRS) stock copies of these resources locally. Contact phs.otherformats@phs.scot to order resources in language or formats not stocked by your HIRS, such as large print, braille, audio, or Easy Read.

The primary resource given to pregnant women at midwifery booking appointment is Ready Steady Baby, in print, onlineEasy-read and Translated formats.

View a short video (external website) where a midwife describes the benefits of the Easy-read format. A video transcript is also available. 

In addition to print, the PHS resources are maintained current and accurate at publichealthscotland / publications and healthscotland.com / publications, where they are available for direct download in other languages and formats . Audio and BSL versions available on NHS inform.

You can find links to other information for pregnant and new parents on the Parents page. 

The National Screening Oversight (NSO) Team has also developed a Guide to National Population Screening in Scotland which includes Pregnancy Screening, Newborn Blood Spot and Newborn Hearing Screening (slides 40 – 42)