Transforming older people’s inpatient mental health services
Overview
South West Yorkshire Partnership NHS Foundation Trust and the NHS West Yorkshire Integrated Care Board worked in partnership to engage with people on how we improve mental health care for older people in our inpatient wards.
There are two groups of older adults who use our inpatient wards. These are:
- People with needs such as dementia, and
- People with other mental health needs such as depression, anxiety and psychosis (often referred to as functional needs).
This work follows significant improvements made to older people’s mental health services in the community, meaning that most people are cared for as close to home as possible. These improvements include core services with close links to GP practices and community physical health teams across Calderdale, Kirklees and Wakefield.
About our services
In West Yorkshire, the Trust has five older people’s mental health wards. These include:
- A ward in Halifax at Calderdale Royal Hospital (16 beds)
- Two wards in the Priestley Unit in Dewsbury, located in Dewsbury and District Hospital (30 beds; 15 male beds and 15 female beds)
- Two wards in the Wakefield district at Fieldhead Hospital (16 beds) and at The Poplars in Hemsworth (12 beds).
In South Yorkshire, the Trust has a ward for people with functional mental health needs (10 beds) at Kendray Hospital Barnsley, which we do not envisage any change as part of this transformation.
Why we are proposing to transform services
Currently, most of our older people’s mental health inpatient wards care for people diagnosed with dementia and functional mental health needs – referred to as a mixed needs ward.
Evidence shows that the clinical and personal needs of people diagnosed with dementia, and people with functional needs are very different. People’s experiences, and those of their families, carers and loved ones, are very personal, and the care and support they receive should be too.
There are different types of clinical leadership, supervision, interventions, and workforce skills required to provide specialist care for people with dementia and people with functional needs. On mixed wards it can be difficult to provide activities that are stimulating and care that is appropriate for both groups of patients.
We face challenges with some of our current estate which does not provide an optimum layout for providing modern, therapeutic care. Factors such as the environment, and the amount of personal space available, are also shown to make a big difference to people’s overall wellbeing and experience of care.
We want to make sure we give people the right care in a safe and supportive, needs-led environment.
Through transformation of older people’s mental health inpatient services, we aim to:
- improve inpatient care and experience
- reduce the length of stay and the number of people being moved between wards
- improve the environment of our wards
- support our healthcare staff and create a skilled workforce which meets the future needs of our older people’s population.
Feedback from previous engagement and involvement activity also supports this.
How we have engaged with people
Engagement with our stakeholders has been a key part of our older people’s mental health inpatient services transformation.
More recently, we have held a workshop with health and social care staff (October 2022) and a stakeholder event (December 2022) which gathered views on the clinical case for change, and potential options for how services could change.
You can read the reports from each of the workshops by clicking on the links below:
You can also read a summary of engagement activity for transformation of older people’s services from 2015 to 2018 here.
An overview of early to more recent engagement is listed below:
Staff, service user, carer and wider public engagement
- Launch of the discovery phase – 9 September 2015
- Service user workshops (café Visits) – October 2015 – November 2015
- Series of internal and external facing co design workshops – March 2016 events
- Staff workshops – summer 2016
- Spring transformation events – May 2017
- Staff drop-in sessions – Autumn 2017
- Inpatient engagement questionnaire – 1st December 2017 to 31st March 2018
- Dialogue groups: LGBTQ Group, Afro-Caribbean groups 2018 – 2019
- Equality Delivery System (EDS) review – Spring 2019
- 2020 – pause for Covid-19
- West Yorkshire Integrated Change System – May 2021 and ongoing
- Inpatient staff conversations – October 2021
- Staff listening events – September 2022
- OPS transformation workshop – 10th October 2022
- OPS mental health inpatient transformation stakeholder event – 15th December 2022
- System discussions (local authority and advocacy) – February – March 2023
- Ward staff conversations – March 2023
- Ward staff briefing – July 2023
Governance
- OPS Inpatient Services Transformation Programme board – ongoing
- Communication, equality, and involvement group (CEE)
- SWYPFT OPS Steering Group
- Partnership Boards and local stakeholder groups – ongoing throughout
- Political and member engagement
Options Development
- Options Review Workshops 2022
- Northern England Clinical Senate – from March 2022 to August 2022
- Workshop / Events late 2022
- Options Finalisation review workshop 9th May 2023
- Options work strand – alignment with strategies – Jan – Jun 23
- Options subgroup: Value for Money – May – Jun 23
Next steps
We are committed to ensuring that the voices and views of our stakeholders are continued to be considered as part of this transformation work. We have reviewed all the feedback we have heard so far and have further developed our plans and outline business case to reflect what people have told us.
Further information
If you would like any further information, or require this information in an alternative format, please email opstransform@swyt.nhs.uk
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