Agenda item

The Committee considered the report of the Director of Public Health that provided Members with an update on the eight recommendations made by the Adults, Wellbeing and Health Overview and Scrutiny Committee and highlighted mental health and wellbeing and suicide prevention activity delivered in County Durham during the COVID-19 response (for copy of report, see file of minutes).

Jane Sunter, Chair of the Suicide Prevention Alliance was in attendance to present the report. She assured members in terms of the eight recommendations that all were integrated into the suicide prevention alliance action plan and had now been completed or developed into further work.

Members were advised that the alliance had continued to meet throughout the pandemic and had a really good attendance and highlighted some of the successes and ongoing work.

Councillor Temple welcomed the report as a member of the scrutiny group that put the report together. He commented that there was a vast amount of work going on and that this was something that they could never take their eye off. He referred to the performance report in relation to localities and members knew what was happening locally and in his area suicide was particularly prevalent. He was worried about COVID and the different behaviours that went on in the community may result in. He commented that it was good to hear of the many varied things that were being done seeking to improve this but this committee would not be able to take its eye off this until R rates were much lower than currently.

Councillor Stephenson referred to a search she had recently being involved in where sadly the person had committed suicide that was tragic. She welcomed the materials in the report about where to sign post people and asked if these could be shared in a format that they could post on social media. The Principal Overview and Scrutiny Officer indicated that he would arrange for Members to receive a jpeg copy of the Mental Health and Emotional Support leaflet.

Gosia Ciesielska referred to prevention that was the key moving forward and people in her area before COVID were waiting three to six months to access mental health therapies. She asked if there was any data on the average wait time for these therapies and how they could approach better access to these services.

Councillor Jopling was pleased with all the work that was being undertaken and they were stepping up a lot to try and capture the people that were suffering from mental illness. She was worried about front line staff who were running on adrenaline and was concerned that when they started to slow down what processes were in place when they realised what had happened to them and what they had seen would really affect them.

Councillor Crathorne indicated that in her area they had a local charity conference partnership who dealt with a lot of people with mental illness and asked if they fed into small charities to see how many people they were actually dealing with. A number of people go to their first local point which was often in their local village and if you fed into these charities then you would get a more local depth of what was happening in areas.

The Chair of the Suicide Prevention Alliance responded that there was a perception that there was a waiting list for mental health therapies, she did not have the data on how long the waiting lists were but this was being considered under the mental health community framework that was reviewing mental health services that were based within local communities. That framework also had money attached to it and was currently led by TEWV NHS Foundation Trust under a partnership arrangement to look at how they could better integrate more mental health services within local communities so that people were not having to wait. In terms of voluntary sectors, they did provide support and were networked as part of the mental health provider forum. The work of the County Durham Community Hub was also significant and a piece of work had been carried out where they used the HUB to respond to people phoning in who were distressed and COVID had accelerated a lot of this process and would be something that they would build on. Looking at the numbers and the deaths that occurred they take their data from the coroner and supported the family and the community. If they felt that they had trend, then they would reach out to the community to engage with them to provide wider support.

Michael Laing, Director of Integrated Community Services, County Durham Integrated Community Care Partnership reassured Councillor Jopling that from the Acute Trust point of view and community services staff they were aware of the emotional intensity as well as the physical effort that staff have put in on the wards and in community settings and had increased the psychological support available.

Sarah Burns, Head of Integrated Commissioning indicated that they had also worked with TEWV NHS Foundation Trust to develop a psychological support service for social care providers. In the event that there was an outbreak in a care home then the team would go in and support either at an individual or group level. In terms of connection with the voluntary sector the mental health disability partnership had invested in some roles to connect mental health services, NHS mental services with the voluntary sector working in mental health.

Resolved: That the contents of the report be noted.