Extraordinary Bridge Forum Meeting
Community Mental Health Transformation
Developing a VCFSE Mental Health Alliance
Wednesday 12th January 2021, 1:00pm to 3.00pm, Teams Meeting
Full notes are attached at the end of the post, along with presentation slides and an Expression of Interest form.
1:00 – 1:10 Welcome, Introductions and Purpose – Micha Woodworth
1:10 – 1:25 Community Mental Health (CMH) Framework and VCFSE Alliance Developments – Mark Trewin, Head of Alliance Building, Community Mental Health Unit, Rethink
1:25 – 1:40 Importance of Co-production with Communities and Service Users – Led by Darlene Martin – Rethink Community Engagement Manager and Garrick – expert by experience
1:40 – 2:20 Round Table Discussion: How we can support CMH Transformation in Wirral and strengthen the role of the VCFSE sector through developing a VCFSE Mental Health Alliance? – Led by Darlene, Mark & Kaneez Shaid, Head of Community Engagement
- Where do we think we are right now in terms of being able to form a successful VCFSE Mental Health Alliance? What are the advantages and disadvantages of this approach?
- How do we think coproduction could ensure that we are delivering services that are really needed by the communities we serve?
- What would be the outcomes you would want to achieve over a 3-year period?
2:30 – 3pm Next Steps and Summing Up – Mark Trewin, Rethink and Micha Woodworth
Community Mental Health (CMH) Framework and VCFSE Alliance Developments – Mark Trewin, Head of Alliance Building, Community Mental Health Unit, Rethink
- Rethink is a national charity – has a unit designed to work with the community mental health framework, working with local authorities and NHS trusts to support its introduction
- Want to ensure that the community mental health framework:
- is a radical redesign of mental health services
- is co-produced by people who use the service and live in the communities where it’s happening
- involves the voluntary, faith and community sector
Five main areas of community mental health framework:
- Understanding and respecting the importance of communities – seeing people’s involvement in communities as an asset
- Dissolving the barriers between services – organisations working more effectively together (e.g. voluntary sector being able to work in alliance rather than competing for tenders; also working with health, social care, housing, education etc)
- Addressing physical health needs – relationship between physical and mental health
- Integrated commissioning of services – using money as a community resource rather than fighting over it
- Putting the person at the centre of their care – if you have multiple physical and mental health needs, can you get the care you need?
Four groups to focus on (NHS England):
- Adults over 18
- Adults with an eating disorder
- People over 65
- Adults over 18 within rehab services
Importance of Co-production with Communities and Service Users – Garrick – Expert by Experience, and Darlene Martin – Rethink Community Engagement Manager
- Experts by Experience are paid – they are employed by Rethink for co-production work
- They act as ‘critical friends’ – extremely important!
Garrick:
- Experts by Experience trying to represent communities who may have fallen between the gaps before – aiming for equity – e.g. age, gender, disability etc – making sure all voices are heard and involved in the change
- Lived experience is fundamental – where are the gaps? What could have been done better for you? Able to influence change
Darlene:
- Services should never be developed without the people who use them being involved – not just as a ‘tick box’ exercise but able to plan and design services
- Co-production isn’t just important for clinical services, it should be for everybody – local authority, employment, housing etc – all these services have an impact on wellbeing!
Kaneez Shaid (Head of Community Engagement):
- Voluntary sector are often the closest to people with mental health conditions – need to be leading transformational change
- Need to release money down into communities, allowing community organisations to connect and keep doing vital work
Round Table Discussion: How we can support CMH Transformation in Wirral and strengthen the role of the VCFSE sector through developing a VCFSE Mental Health Alliance? – Led by Darlene, Mark & Kaneez
- Where do we think we are right now in terms of being able to form a successful VCFSE Mental Health Alliance? What are the advantages and disadvantages of this approach?
- How do we think coproduction could ensure that we are delivering services that are really needed by the communities we serve?
- What would be the outcomes you would want to achieve over a 3-year period?
- Positive feelings about a VCFSE Mental Health Alliance, but with some caution around alliances given previous experience
- Importance of statutory sector also and making sure specialist services are available when needed
- What could community mental health care look like? We need community care that wraps around people
- Accessibility of services for people with learning disabilities and/or autism needs to be improved
- Funding difficulties and having to compete for funding can be a barrier to working together
- Children and young people aren’t the focus of this work but we need to think about transitions and a whole family model
- Older people need access to preventative resources and trust and consistency within mental health services
- BAME communities – stigma around mental health services, can be hard to even open conversations
- #Spare5 is important to these conversations – need to involve training in the alliance
Sli.do – What do you think are the main gaps and needs in mental health provision in Wirral?
Next Steps and Summing Up – Mark Trewin, Rethink and Micha Woodworth
- Do you want to form some kind of alliance in Wirral and work alongside CWP? Answer seems to be “yes, and!”
- Next steps – think practically – CWP also covers Cheshire East and Cheshire West so we need to link up with other groups