Mental health
What are our overall aims by 2028?
To deliver an all-age, person-centred approach, driven by access to physical and mental health and social care in the same place at the same time, with no wrong door, where prevention is at the heart of all we do.
A system-wide approach to promoting mental wellbeing and resilience is embedded, underpinned by evidence-based interventions to reduce mental health inequalities linked to access, patient experience and outcomes.
Broader access to care, moving away from risk and care clusters to quicker access to interventions based on presenting needs (rather than diagnosis), and with trauma-informed Community Mental Health Teams aligned to Primary Care Networks and patients.
People who have experienced problems with their mental health are empowered to take greater control over their own care and supported to manage their own conditions more effectively.
What’s our starting point?
Our system wide Mental Health Collaborative was established in 2022. The Collaborative has taken a lead role in the development of a new Mental Health Strategy for the system. The strategy will build on our system mental health Joint Strategic Needs Assessments, address known local mental health inequalities, service challenges, and be informed by whole pathway demand and capacity modelling. The Collaborative will put local partners, the voices of local people and VCSE partners at the heart of decision making within the programme.
Our local Mental Health Transformation Programme drives the delivery of relevant objectives in the NHS Long Term Plan and will continue to put additional investment into the system. In particular, the Community Mental Health Transformation Programme will deliver a new model of community mental health care for adults and older adults built on integrated working across primary care, secondary care and VCSE partners.
Our local Transformation Plan for Improving Children and Young People’s Mental Health and Emotional Wellbeing will continue to drive work to develop and improve local services to meet the mental health and emotional wellbeing needs of CYP in a range of settings appropriate for them.
What are some of the key links to other parts of the plan?
Population Health Management and Engaging and Involving People – we will use PHM and the voices of people with lived experience to drive commissioning decisions and plan service changes.
System Transformation – working collaboratively and pooling resources through the Mental Health Collaborative and broader strategic partnerships will be a central part to our approach to improvement and transformation.
Health Inequalities – monitoring and addressing mental health inequalities linked to access, patient experience and outcomes will be a key area of focus across all programmes and plans.
Prioritising Prevention and Wider Determinants – the new Mental Health Strategy will place a strong emphasis on prevention and earlier help for those who need it.
Collaboration and Integration – across the plan period we will increase Place level integration of services aligned to PCNs.
What will we be focusing on in the next 2 years?
Children and Young People’s Mental Health and Emotional Wellbeing
Contributing to the development a Children and Young People Health and Wellbeing Strategy for Coventry and Warwickshire and being part of the membership of the new system-wide Children and Young People Board – see Children and Young People section.
Improving access to and transforming mental health and wellbeing services for CYP through the delivery of our Transformation Plan for Improving Children and Young People’s Mental Health and Emotional Wellbeing.
Maintaining oversight of the delivery of the Transformation Plan through the Children’s mental health and wellbeing transformation board
Prioritising investment in CYP mental health and wellbeing services, with a specific focus on developing services for 18–25 year old people.
Increasing access to Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) services at all levels in order to meet the national ambition of a 35% increase in CYP accessing mental health services.
Expanding the CYP mental health service offer up to the age of 25 by building on the existing peer mentoring service for people transitioning from CAMHs.
Mental Health Inequalities & Public Mental Health
Prioritising investment to reduce local inequalities in mental health, targeting those who are most at risk in our local communities.
Improving the quality and availability of local data on mental health inequalities to drive transformation and advance equality.
Implementing the Patient and Carer Race Equality Framework to eliminate unacceptable racial disparity in service access, experience and outcomes of mental healthcare.
Achieving system sign up to the Concordat for Better Mental Health to drive cross sector action on improving mental health and wellbeing and tackling inequality.
Suicide Prevention
Working with partners via the Coventry and Warwickshire suicide prevention partnership to deliver the recently published Coventry and Warwickshire Suicide Prevention Strategy 2023-30 ensuring that people have access to the information, support and services that they need and people are confident to talk about suicide.
In the context of the strategy developing a comprehensive approach to suicide prevention across system partners through the Mental Health Collaborative.
NHS Talking Therapies
Delivering our local Quality Improvement Plan to improve the NHS Talking Therapies Service to meet NHS Long Term Plan objectives, including addressing inequalities in access, improving waiting times and access rates, and expanding the offer to people living with long term health conditions.
Strengthening the relationship between the NHS Talking Therapies Service and general practice through increased visibility and the development of clear referral pathways as part of the Community Mental Health Transformation Programme.
Community Mental Health Transformation
Driving increased integrated working across primary care, secondary care and VCSE partners, and integrated delivery of services at system, Place and PCN levels through the delivery of our Community Mental Health Transformation Programme Plan. The new community-based offer will include greater access to psychological therapies, improved physical health care, employment support, personalised and trauma informed care, medicines management and support for self-harm and co-existing substance use.
Maintaining oversight of the delivery of the Transformation Plan through the Community Mental Health Programme Board.
Developing outcome measures across Community Mental Health services.
Dementia
Recovering the dementia diagnosis rate by delivering the established local Action Plan, including increasing referrals to and improving efficiency in the local Memory Service.
Working with partners to deliver the Coventry and Warwickshire Dementia Strategy and the aligned Delivery Plan.
Perinatal Mental Health Services
Working in partnership with the Local Maternity and Neonatal System to deliver maternal and perinatal mental health objectives in the NHS Long Term Plan, ensuring equitable and quality mental health and wellbeing support for parents and infants during the first 1001 Days – see Maternity and Neonatal Services section.
Delivering the strategic Parent-Infant Mental Health and Wellbeing Action Plan 2023-25.
Maintaining oversight of the delivery of the Action Plan through the ‘wellbeing in the 1001 days’ steering group.
Urgent and Acute Pathways
Supporting the delivery of local plans to increase mental health expertise in ambulance services, including ensuring that mental health professionals are embedded in all Emergency Operation Centres by the end of 2023/24 and improving training for ambulance staff to enable effective response to those in mental health crisis.
Work with the Acute and Urgent Care Steering Group to build on the recent expansion of community-based crisis services, ensuring that a range of open-access, age-appropriate services are available which meet local population needs, alongside 24/7 crisis resolution and home treatment provision.
Ensuring the quality of local inpatient services.
Key Challenges
Need to align Coventry and Warwickshire contractual arrangements for CYP mental health.
Development of system wide approaches and priorities and collaborative ways of working.
Building a sustainable model for working with the VCSE sector.
Key Metrics and Deliverables
Mental Health Strategy
Engagement programme to inform the development of the new Coventry and Warwickshire Mental Health Strategy completed by end of quarter 1 2023/24.
New Mental Health Strategy published by end of quarter 2 2023/24.
Monitoring and Assurance Framework aligned to new Mental Health Strategy developed and operational by end of quarter 2 2023/24.
Children and Young People
Improved waiting times and services for children in a crisis.
Increased numbers of peer support workers to improve service delivery.
Delivering milestones within our Transformation Plan for Improving Children and Young People’s Mental Health and Emotional Wellbeing.
NHS Talking Therapies
Improved access to NHS Talking Therapies, providing timely access to treatment for people with depression and anxiety disorder:
- Access – achieve agreed trajectory relating to number of people starting treatment;
- Recovery rate – 50% of eligible referrals have moved to recovery in line with technical guidance;
- Waiting times – 75% of people to start treatment within 6 weeks of referral and 95% to start treatment within 18 weeks of referral.
Community Mental Health Transformation
Achieving a 5% year on year increase in the number of adults and older adults supported by community mental health services.
4-week waiting time standard for referral to first treatment for adult and older adult community mental health teams.
Delivering milestones within our Community Mental Health Transformation Programme Plan:
- Increased numbers of people with serious mental illness receiving a physical health check each year.
- Narrow the gap between the life expectancy of people with serious mental illness and the rest of the population.
Dementia
Recovering the dementia diagnosis rate to 66.7%.
Perinatal Mental Health
Improved access to perinatal mental health services - see Maternity and Neonatal Services section.