This improvement work has a real focus on the community mental health provision to complement the urgent care and inpatient service lines. The team is looking at:

  • Standardisation of practice
  • Improved access (working towards a referral to treatment time of four weeks)
  • Use of digital to improve efficiency and effectiveness as well as the patient experience
  • Much more cohesive and partnership working with the voluntary sector to maximise the assets of the communities
  • Moving away from CPA to personalised care.

For further information please see the dedicated extranet section here 

Older Adults: An Organic and Functional Pathways paper was presented and approved at the Community Senior Management Group. This was due to be presented at OMG in October but was postponed and a deep dive will be conducted with a plan to present the paper in December for final sign off.

Comms, Digital and Engagement: Development of content for inclusion in the stakeholder newsletter is underway, the group will discuss the topics to be shared during the next workstream meeting on 11 November. A transformation animation has been co-produced with our lived experience colleagues and we are hoping this will be signed off in the coming weeks. The animation aims to give an insight into the purpose of the Community Mental Health Transformation and the impact the changes will or could have had for our service users.

Access and Egress: Several task and finish groups have been meeting to review their aligned objectives prior to the next workstream meeting. The task & finish groups are reviewing the Naming of Services, Primary Care Access & Referrals/Pathways, Moving on Plan/Discharge, Transfers of care, DNA process and management and Rapid Access. A task & finish group has also been established to look at Clinical Harm Reviews.  

Patient Access Times: A small membership are reviewing the outpatient process and aim to establish guidance on how appointments are currently managed – this along with the next steps for this group will be discussed during their next meeting. Lots of work has been completed around Waiting List Recovery times, with the reporting process for the monthly meeting standardised and targets/KPIs set. Some CMHTs have had success in relation to the 4-week RTT so colleagues from these teams have been invited to the next Waits meeting to share their learning. There is also a request for engagement with the Rio system to implement changes to enable our Physical Health colleagues to report in the same manner.

CERT: CERT team launch day has been scheduled for 29 November. The group continue to map out of area placements, with operational meetings with the ICB and local authorites will start in November.

Intervention Based Care: A Homelessness task and finish group has been established and will meet on a bi-monthly basis. The group have agreed a focus on the Psychosis pathway and have been working in collaboration with colleagues in Urgent Care to establish what this pathway looks like currently. The group will then consider the pathway as a whole, once achieved the group will then add review another diagnosis pathway.

Workforce: A workforce redesign day was held on the1 November with colleagues from CMHTs, Finance, HR, AHPs were in attendance. The group discussed establishing a baseline assessment of our existing workforce.

CPA to CMHF: The membership of this group has been extended, the project plan and agenda reviewed and will enable the group to move through each of the phases with pace and with a clear direction and focus.

Lived Experience: Interviews are scheduled to take place in November to appoint seven peer support lived experience workers. Interview preparation has been done in collaboration with our Lived Experienced Senior Peer Support Workers and Inclusion colleagues. These roles will be embedded within CMH teams across our footprint, with this in mind, those team managers have been invited to a workstream meeting where they will be presented an insight into the Peer Support Worker role and responsibilities and the support available to them to ensure they are fully equipped to support our new colleagues in these roles.   

  • A well developed programme of work that has been delivering for the last four years
  • Key areas include access to our services, transition from our services and intervention based care
  • Benefits achieved so far include:
  1. Improved relationships with our external partners
  2. Work with primary care including more than 50 additional roles reimbursement Scheme (ARRS) practitioners recruited
  3. Move away from CPA to personalised care
  4. Caseload management 24% reduction
  5. Waiting list for first contact reduction from circa 60 weeks (Sept 2020) to under seven weeks average (Oct 23) Development and integration of a Lived Experience team.