Paths presents at national psychology conference

Our Paths service recently presented at the Division of Counselling Psychology Annual Conference 2025, held in Bristol.

Paths is a specialist service for women and birthing people who are experiencing emotional distress and mental health needs from reproductive trauma.

The annual conference explored physical health and the innovative ways that psychological practitioners have developed to work within this field.

Our service shared details of their quality improvement project to explore whether data could be used to understand patterns of referral across West Yorkshire, and how well known the service was by referrers.

The project found it was possible to identify characteristics of women referred to the service, as well as areas of health inequality and exclusion.

The next steps in the work are to better understand how co-designing services to address stigmas, empowering women to speak up, and meaningful community engagement would improve access to the service.

Principal counselling psychologist and service lead Dr Estelle Verdi, who presented the work at the conference, said: “Feedback from attendees was that Paths is a valuable service which fills a gap which existed previously for women with moderate to severe mental health presentations as a result of baby loss.

“People commented on the usefulness of embedding quality improvement methodology within the service evaluation to give a consistent overview of core relevant data. Recognition was given to the importance of meaningful engagement with local communities to understand and increase access.”

Find out more about Paths on our website.