Charlotte Bevan's mother on her daughter's death

The mother of Charlotte Bevan says her daughter would not have been allowed to “slip through the net” if a complete perinatal mental health team had been looking after her on the day she left St Michael’s Hospital in Bristol before jumping to her death with her four-day-old baby.

Charlotte and her newborn daughter fell to their deaths from a cliff after leaving hospital in Bristol, four days after the baby was born.

The news comes on the day a NHS Mental Health Taskforce released a report highlighting huge gaps in perinatal mental health services fourteen months after Charlotte and baby Zaani’s deaths.

Charlotte’s mother, Rachel Fortune said the hospital staff looked after her “to the best of their ability” but it was “unthinkable” that she could “just press a button and leave”.

In a joint statement after the inquest into Charlotte’s death NHS England, Bristol Clinical Commissioning Group, University Hospitals Bristol NHS Foundation Trust, and Avon and Wiltshire Mental Health Partnership NHS Trust said: "As a health community, we will act on the coroner's findings to ensure that mothers with mental health needs have access to the services and professionals they need to keep them and their babies safe.”