Agenda item

Chris West, Director of Nursing and Quality West Leicestershire and East Leicestershire and Rutland Clinical Commissioning Groups, and Elaine Egan Morris, CAMHS Manager/Future in Mind Transformation Programme Manager, to make a presentation on Transforming Mental Health  and Wellbeing Services for Children and Young People Across Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland.

Chris West, Director of Nursing and Quality West Leicestershire and East Leicestershire and Rutland Clinical Commissioning Groups, and Elaine Egan Morris, CAMHS Manager/Future in Mind Transformation Programme Manager, gave a presentation on Transforming Mental Health and Wellbeing Services for Children and Young People across Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland.  A copy of the presentation had been circulated with the agenda.

It was noted that:-

• Future In Mind was aimed at transforming children and young people’s mental health services, over five years through ‘Promoting, Protecting and Improving our Children and Young Peoples Emotional Health and Wellbeing’.

• The local aims were to:-
  • Develop in partnership with children and young people. Children and Young People and key stakeholders.
  • Set out a multi-agency approach to improve mental health and wellbeing in Children and Young People.
  • Aim to address gaps in current service provision.

• The planned outcomes were:-
  • Increased prevention and building resilience in Children and Young People and reduce attendance at A&E.
  • Improve timely access to assessment.
  • Increase staff numbers and improve the skill mix.
  • Improve access to evidence based practice.

• Feedback from the initial engagement events with children and young people identified six schemes of work that the plan should deliver.  These were:-
  • Vanguard – Place of Safety Emergency Department
  • Building Resilience
  • Early Help
  • Eating Disorders
  • Access to CAMHS
  • Crisis and Home Treatment

• The next steps were to:-
  • Share with partners the 2017 Transformation Plan which had gone out to consultation and included the key lines of enquiries and also addressed a number of local issues.
  • Publish the final version on the agency website.
  • Review the role and responsibility of key partners and steering group.

• The multi-agency approach now involved health, local authority and voluntary sector staff in delivering services.  This had been developed during the Transformation Plan with additional funds being provided for early intervention services for ADHD.  Relate had been engaged to provide 1:1 sessions as part of the early intervention needs for children.  Schools now had the ability to directly refer children for ADHD assessments.  Additional resources had been provided for ADOS assessments for autistic autism and 1 practice had been able to see over 60 children in a 7 week period and this was contributing significantly to reducing the waiting list for assessments.

• The collaborative working in delivering the new common model was considered a significant success but there was still more to do.  The benefits of having a common model with everyone using the same language and having a single front door of access was also considered important.

The Deputy City Mayor for Children, Young People and Schools recognised that the initiative was for Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland, but sought assurances that children and young people in the City would be able to actively participate in the evaluation and development of the service.  In response, the CAMHS Manager/Future in Mind Transformation Programme Manager stated that young people in the City had been involved in the engagement process. 

The Youth Development Worker commented that whilst Young People’s Council and Young People Advisors had been approached during the commissioning of young advisors in evaluating the programme and a possible role as mystery shoppers; there had been no agreement on the standards of involvement and costs.  There was still and offer from LLR to make a presentation to the Young People’s Council; which was confirmed by the  Director of Nursing and Quality, West Leicestershire and East Leicestershire and Rutland Clinical Commissioning Groups.  The Director also commented that the process was not completed and she would liaise with the Youth Development Worker as it was not the intention to exclude anyone from the process.   The Strategic Director of Children’s Services stated that this issue had already been raised in the previous week and it was intended to follow up the effective engagement of young people in the City through the Steering Group to ensure that they were involved in the process.

Members of the Board commented that collaborative working relied on being able to share information across different agencies and asked if the implications of the General Data Protection Regulations and the New Data Protection Legislation would affect this.  The Director of Nursing and Quality confirmed that the all the recent focus had been to develop a model that everyone could support but acknowledged that this was inextricably linked to sharing information; so the implications of sharing information to comply with the new legislation would be addressed.

The Chair commented that sharing information and budget resources were often ‘blockers’ within the system and these two key areas would need to be revisited in the future.