Agenda item

The Committee received a presentation from Tees, Esk and Wear Valleys NHS Foundation Trust Community Services Transformation Programme on Evaluating the Community Mental Health Transformation in County Durham (for copy of slides, see file of minutes).

Jo Murray, Associate Director of Mental Health and Learning Disabilities Partnerships and Strategy for County Durham, Tees, Esk and Wear Valleys NHS Foundation Trust was in attendance to deliver the presentation that provided details of what they were trying to achieve; how they used transformation resources; what’s in place now; headline activity and performance changes; system feedback to Healthwatch on progress to date; achievements, challenges and risks and patient stories.

Councillor Jopling referred to the first point of call that was your GP and indicated that this can be difficult as some areas were good for obtaining a GP appointment but other areas it was difficult, and the statistics only showed the people who could obtain an appointment which was worrying.

The Associate Director responded that they were introducing a system where you did not have to go through your GP. She commented that some people would prefer to be referred via their GP, so they were making it as easy as possible for GPs to signpost those people into the right areas of support. She stated that they had an alternative that was first contact practitioners who could triage to a specialist mental health practitioner in that practise for the first appointment instead of going through a GP. They also had additional staff that could provide an in-depth appointment, ideally, they would like a self-present themselves to access services. She advised Members that they would start to see business cards and posters appearing in practices and were hoping to extend this campaign in conjunction with Public Health to make it more accessible such as community centres.

Councillor Jopling commented that it was not easy for patients to get through to their GPs and if they could access the service direct this would be a better outcome for the patient.

Councillor Early stated that this was a big piece of work and asked where they had services provided by third sector delivery were these providers able to access the training offered.

The Associate Director responded that they could access the training and they had focused on Derwentside which was the pilot area, but they were going to roll this out across the County. The training was free to access online and had been well received. Take up of the training offer was being promoted by word-of-mouth from those third sector organisations who had already taken advantage of this training and realised the associated benefits.

In response to a question from Councillor Hovvels on change, the Associate Director advised that the joint work with Healthwatch had been important to ascertain if they had getting it right.

Mrs Stobbart referred to housing associations and asked how they could access the training.

The Associate Director indicated that they worked with housing associations at a local level and commented that they were a key component.

Ms McGee referred to the work still to be done on embedding a single pathway in each local area to replace multiple access points and asked what additional training would be given to staff.

The Associate Director responded that this was something that they were still exploring as there was a wealth of training available and they needed to produce an offer that was tailored to their system. She stated that this was work in progress and was identified as a priority for the next six months.

Resolved: That the contents of the presentation be noted.