Since we shared our last update in March, there has been further progress on the Community Mental Health Transformation (CMHT) programme.
Key highlights:
- The teams developed under the CMHT programme are now running as business as usual. This includes the Complex Rehabilitation Team, Complex Emotional Needs service and Annual Physical Health Checks service. We will continue to review their progress and thank them for their amazing work so far.
- The focus for the next year of CMHT is achieving our three must do’s (highlighted below)
- Throughout May & June we have been on engaging with stakeholders and introducing the Neighbourhood programme (see more below).
- Our focus for the next quarter is consulting with stakeholders on new ways of working and sharing the current draft models for our leadership structure, team structures, referral process (the front door) what having a ‘Trusted Assessment’ will look like.
Primarily we will be focussing now on three priorities as outlined in NHS England’s Long Term Plan:
Aligning our community mental health teams to Gloucestershire’s Integrated Locality Partnerships (ILPs). The ILPs are partnerships made up of Local Authority, NHS, Voluntary services and other community services, including emergency services. They work with each other to bring services together and plan how services are delivered to their local populations. Within Gloucestershire there are 6 ILPs – Cheltenham, Cotswolds, Gloucester City, Stroud & Berkeley Vale, Forest of Dean and Tewksbury.
By aligning our Community Mental Health teams to the ILPs we are able to deliver a more localised approach to improve health and care. The physical health teams in GHC are already arranged by ILPs and have created their own locality teams known as Integrated Community Teams (ICTs). We hope to have our mental health teams mirror the ICT way of working, to increase opportunities for collaborative care between our teams and greater understanding of each localities’ needs.
Some of our mental health teams are currently organised as Team North, South and West, therefore we will be changing these teams to Team Cheltenham, Team Gloucester etc. This will involve some service organisational changes which we will be doing gradually to ensure minimal impact to our staff and the people we support.
We will be implementing the ‘No Wrong Door’ policy. We have heard during engagement sessions about the dozens of possible routes into mental health services. We hope to establish a clear entry route into each locality mental health team known as ‘the front door’. Each of the localities will have a virtual hub, where people’s referrals will be received and triaged.
We have begun drafting what this process might look like and started initial staff consultation. We also held a successful workshop with Experts by Experience where we heard their own personal experiences about what makes accessing services a positive or negative experience and features we would hope to have within our ‘Front Door’.
Improved working between Voluntary Community Sector Enterprise (VCSE) colleagues and the Primary Care Sector. We have highlighted the need to shift our way of working towards an integrated, community based mental health care team. Central to this is the collaboration between NHS services and VCSE partners. The Locality Community Partnership meetings have paved the way for more joined up working with our VCSE colleagues and have encouraged clinicians to refer onto services that they may have not known about previously. We will further embed this model of working into the next phase of transformation and will look to engage with our VCSE partners about what this might look like in the coming months.
Engagement
We have held several engagement sessions recently to discuss our latest progress and gather feedback and ideas. This has included sessions with GHC Community Mental Health Teams, Gloucestershire Primary Care Networks, the People’s Representative Action Board and VCSE partners. to meet stakeholders to introduce the Must Dos and gather initial views
We will continue consultation throughout this process and endeavour to book in similar events in the next 6 months.
Over the next quarter we aim to:
- Share an initial draft model for the new ‘Front Door’ access route into the new Neighbourhood Teams.
- Share a proposal for how the new Neighbourhoods Teams will align to the Primary Care Networks.
- Analyse our current assessment approaches within core teams, setting up workshops with staff and experts by experience to draft a new core assessment.
- Work with the Quality Team who are completing the Assessment Care Management Policy work to understand what is essential recording in our Clinical Systems and what can be reduced to avoid the duplication of work, as raised in GHC staff engagement sessions.
- Arrange future workshops to consult on the models of working.
Thank you to those who have already either taken part in engagement sessions or expressed an interest in doing so. If you would like to get involved or have any questions at all, please email cmhttransformation@ghc.nhs.uk.
Supporting Annual Health Checks for Serious Mental Illness
For the past two years, Gloucestershire Rural Community Council – GRCC (Independence Trust) has been working in collaboration with primary care (GP) practices across Gloucestershire to increase the uptake of Annual Physical Health Checks (APHC) for people with Serious Mental Illness (SMI). This initiative has been well-received, with participating practices not only feeling supported but also often exceeding their targets.
Due to this success, funding for the initiative has been extended for another year and GRCC is eager to continue its work and invites practices that have not yet engaged to collaborate. The goal is to help practices achieve their APHC targets this financial year.
The initiative has received positive feedback from both practices and patients. One practice manager expressed gratitude, stating: “We certainly wouldn’t have managed to see as many patients as we did without your support.” Patients also noted the difference this support made in their willingness and ability to attend their appointments.
GRCC looks forward to supporting more practices and ensuring that all patients with SMI receive their important health checks. Practices interested in learning how GRCC can assist them are encouraged to reach out via ahc.grcc-indetrust@nhs.net.
