To consider progress against mental health priorities within the health and wellbeing strategy.

An update was provided by the programme manager for children and mental health, which is priority 1 for the health and wellbeing strategy. It was reported that services had come a long way and progress was being made, with partners and agencies taking ownership and 10 actions developed into plans.

An overview of activity and successes included:

•           developing social networks - a pilot in Ross with mental health and primary care bringing communities together for self-help and management. This would be reviewed in April to report on the feasibility of extending this across the county; 

•           In Leominster, adults’ services were working with the Alzheimer’s Society to create a community-led support hub which would open in January as a pilot which would be the subject of international study through the University of Worcester; 

•           CAMHS research through the children and young peoples’ partnership with young people to identity how to make a good transition process to support recovery;

•           70 practitioners met through the children and young peoples’ partnership to talk about mental health, led by young people, some of whom were in recovery. Plans were to hold another meeting in February for children’s mental health week;  

•           First cohort of graduates from Exeter – staff employed by CLD and 2gether who are undertaking post-graduate training using skills and interventions with young people. This was successful and there will be a new cohort next year in order to grow the workforce to provide local interventions;

•           Adults – 1200 people accessing new support; there is confidence that awareness was taking effect. There were 500 new diagnoses of dementia and new support was proving beneficial.

Challenges remained as needs were complex and there were interdependences such as emotional resilience linking to safeguarding. Resources were limited but were being secured. Commissioning was taking an evidence based approach and partners were signed up to reporting on key performance indicators.  There was good progress, with ambition to achieve more. 

In response to the update, board members made the following comments and observations:

•           waiting list for CAMHS was now 4 weeks compared with 6 months and with triage in place. Some people are seen within 24 hours of referral with the focus now on prevention rather than crisis;

•           there was a move to an outcomes based model, testing with stakeholders for their views to inform commissioning;

•           paediatric liaison was a priority and the urgent care pathway was being redesigned to look at reducing self-harm. Changes were also being made for on-site services to be available over 24 hours for children, with additional staff cover. 

In terms of factors that influenced the success of the project that could be translated to other areas, it was identified that a key factor was joint working to identify outcomes for the target population, taking an holistic point of view. Compared with other areas, there was opportunity to start afresh with mental health to model future work, so this was one area where agencies can talk collectively about joint working and the programme was governed by outcomes that people said they wanted.

RESOLVED

THAT:

(a)        The mental health plans, milestones and challenges identified within appendix 1 are reviewed to assess the degree to which they are achieving the mental health priorities within the health and wellbeing strategy; and

(b)       The board identify any additional actions needed to secure improvement.