A service for women who suffer from depression during pregnancy has been honoured at a national awards ceremony.

Delphi Ellis, who runs the Depression In Pregnancy Project as a volunteer at Bedford Hospital, was nominated for the mental health and wellbeing prize at the NHS Health and Social Care Awards in Bury St Edmunds last week.

Ms Ellis, who is also voluntary services manager at the hospital, said she was inspired to set up the service after suffering from antenatal depression herself in 2004.

She said: "Even though I was delighted to be pregnant, I was still feeling down and crying all the time. I did some research and discovered that around one in ten women have depression during pregnancy.

"That can be for lots of reasons – some might have found it difficult to get pregnant, some might have a history of depression, others may not want to be pregnant.

"At first I created it as a website, and then with my midwife Zoe
Wright we set up the support group on the first Thursday of every month. We have all kinds of women, from teenagers to 40-somethings, and it is open to friends and families too.

The website www.depression-in-pregnancy.org.uk has had over 30,000 hits from all over the world.

Meanwhile, the people responsible for Bedford Hospital's new personal digital assistants system (PDAs) went one better by winning their category at the event.

It helps maintenance staff keep tabs on what work has been completed, helping cut down on paperwork and rapid ordering of spare parts.

Maintenance manager Peter Hurst said: "The new system has helped us to improve our efficiency which means we can respond to more maintenance jobs – some of which can be urgent jobs in wards.

"Staff are not required to laboriously complete paper dockets with the date, time and parts required. Everything is recorded by just a few taps on the screen of the PDA and the customer even signs on the screen when the job is completed."