Mothers & babies

The health and wellbeing of women during pregnancy is vitally important to ensuring healthy outcomes for mothers and their babies.

Psychosocial issues such as alcohol and drug use, mental health and family violence are a result of complex social, economic, cultural, psychological and biological factors.

In pregnancy, secondary harm may impact fetal, neonatal and early childhood development with potential intergenerational impacts. It is important to address the underlying causes of psychosocial issues and implement systems to support and rehabilitate the mother in a culturally-sensitive, compassionate, holistic and respectful manner.

It is expected that using evidenced-based resources will improve maternal health and wellbeing, fetal, neonatal and early childhood outcomes and be beneficial to the community as a whole. This collection of resources contains links for maternal health carers. The resources include clinical guidelines, screening tools and information about services for supporting psychosocial health during pregnancy. They are intended to help maternal health carers to quickly find current information and online tools that may assist them and the women in their care.

The collection of resources was selected through a review conducted by the AIHW in consultation with an expert working group (EWG). For more information about the methodology informing resource selection please see Methodology for resource evaluation.