Changes agreed to older people’s mental health services

The proposed Trust-wide community model for older people, which was developed following a full engagement process within the Trust, has now been signed off by the Mental Health Transformation Board. The Board gave its approval for a full business case and workforce model to be developed and this work will commence shortly.

As part of this process we will continue having discussions to ensure everyone fully understands the new model, its principles, and how it has been designed based on good practice evidence collected and learning from others. This includes service user and carer feedback, staff input and external learning visits. This next phase will include looking at the service model for community older people’s services and matching this with our existing workforce; ensuring it helps us to meet our priorities and objectives and continues to support both service users and carers.

Our next step will be to engage with CCGs and local authorities on the community model. We will also be organising service user and carer engagement events in the spring to ensure that they are fully involved in the process and understand how our learning has helped us shape our new services and get to where we are today.

Alongside this we will be looking at our inpatient services to ensure that, following the changes in our community services, they are best suited to meet the needs of our local people. This will all be progressed by Trust-wide transformation groups, which have representation and commitment from each BDU.

This transformation will ensure that the new model works best for our service users and provides a consistent and equitable service across the Trust, as far as it is possible.

We will continue to engage with service users, staff and commissioners throughout the transformation process.