Perinatal stress and anxiety from conception to two years postpartum have important adverse outcomes for women and infants. This study examined (i) women’s perception of sources and experiences of perinatal stress and anxiety, (ii) women’s attitudes to and experiences of available supports, and (iii) women’s preferences for perinatal stress and anxiety supports in Ireland.

An online mixed-methods cross-sectional survey was conducted with 700 women in Ireland. Participants were pregnant women (n = 214) or mothers of children ≤ 2 years old (n = 486). Participants completed closed-ended questionnaires on sociodemographic, birth and child factors, and on stress, anxiety, perceived social support, and resilience. Participants completed open-ended questions about experiences of stress and anxiety and the supports available for stress and anxiety during pregnancy and/or postpartum. Quantitative data were analysed descriptively and using correlations; qualitative data were analysed using thematic analysis.

Quantitative data indicated significant relationships between perinatal stress and/or anxiety and women’s perceived social support, resilience, having a previous mental health disorder diagnosis (both p < 0.001), and experiencing a high-risk pregnancy or pregnancy complications (p < 0.01). Themes developed in qualitative analyses included: ‘perceived responsibilities’; ‘self-care’; ‘care for maternal health and well-being’; ‘social support’; and ‘access to support and information’.

Women’s stress and anxiety are impacted by multiple diverse factors related to the individual, to interpersonal relationships, to perinatal health and mental health outcomes, and to available services and supports. Development of support-based individual-level interventions and increased peer support, coupled with improvements to service provision is needed to provide better perinatal care for women in Ireland.

Successful research is frequently hampered by poor study recruitment, especially in community settings and with participants who are women and their children. Health visitors (HVs) and community midwives (CMs) are well placed to invite young families, and pregnant and postnatal women to take part in such research, but little is known about how best to support these health professionals to do this effectively.

This study uses the Theoretical Domains Framework (TDF) to explore the factors that influence whether HVs and CMs invite eligible patients to take part in research opportunities.

HVs (n = 39) and CMs (n = 22) working in four NHS Trusts and one community partnership in England completed an anonymous, online survey with open-ended questions about their experiences of asking eligible patients to take part in the research. Qualitative data were analysed using directed content analysis and inductive coding to identify specific barriers and enablers to patient recruitment within each of the 14 theoretical domains.

Six key TDF domains accounted for 81% of all coded responses. These were (a) environmental context and resources; (b) beliefs about capabilities; (c) social/professional role and identity; (d) social influences; (e) goals; (f) knowledge. Key barriers to approaching patients to participate in the research were time and resource constraints, perceived role conflict, conflicting priorities, and particularly for HVs, negative social influences from patients and researchers. Enablers included feeling confident to approach patients, positive influence from peers, managers and researchers, beliefs in the relevance of this behaviour to health care and practice and good knowledge about the study procedures, its rationale and the research topic. The findings suggest that to improve research recruitment involving HVs and CMs, a package of interventions is needed to address the barriers and leverage the enablers to participant approach.

This study explored health visitors’ perception of their role in the universal childhood immunisation programme with particular emphasis on influencing factors and communication strategies.

The majority of parents’ consent to immunisation, but some find decision-making in this area difficult and have unmet information needs. In the United Kingdom, health visitors routinely provide immunisation information for parents, whereas general practitioners (GPs) and practice nurses tend to administer vaccines and respond to parents/carers’ questions. Research has investigated health professionals’ views and knowledge about immunisation, but less is understood about health visitors’ role and how they communicate with parents.

Following the Local Research Ethics and Research Governance permissions, all health visitors (n = 120) working in one county in the United Kingdom were invited to participate in the study. Semistructured interviews (n = 22) were undertaken using a prompt guide. The interviews were transcribed verbatim. Thematic analysis using an iterative approach was used to explore the data facilitated by NVIVO™ software.

Five themes emerged from the interviews. These were health visitors’ professional role; identity and perceived barriers and communication strategies, parents’ right to choose, confidence in measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccination and communicating with migrant families about immunisation. There were differences between the health visitors in their perceptions of their roles, skills and knowledge and communication strategies. Health visitors perceived that GPs and practice nurses took a paternalistic approach to the provision of immunisation information, while they used a parental decision-making model. Health visitors reported a loss of professional confidence following the MMR crisis.

Given the evidence that some parents find it difficult to gain the information they need about immunisation and health visitors’ acknowledgement that their usual communication models were not effective during the MMR crisis, we feel specific communication skills training is needed to enable health professionals to provide parents with appropriate decision support.