Mid and South Essex Primary Care – Mental Health Model Learning

Course Description

Improving access to mental health support in primary care settings has been part of the NHS Five Year Forward Plan and continued into the NHS Long Term Plan.

This was supported through funding in the Mental Health Investment Standard and ARRS roles. The work has been ongoing in the Mid and South Essex ICB footprint since 2019 with Mental Health Primary Care practitioner roles now established in Primary Care Networks (PCN) across mid and south Essex.

The roll out of this new model of working, alongside a rapidly changing environment and the greater need for mental health support during the pandemic, resulted in challenges to embedding the model.

In 2023/2024, work to refresh this model continued in line with the changes that are happening across the system to take the learning from the last four years and drive forward an approach which is effective, feasible and developed in partnership.

So far we have:

• Met individually with providers of services to understand the challenges
• Created broad live stakeholder workshops to bring conversations together (February 2024 and June 2024)
• Developed lunchtime learning sessions focused on agreed workstream priorities; Series 1 – The Model (shown on the right panel)
• Started the prescribing workstream with stakeholder representation with medical colleagues in primary and secondary care, medicines management colleagues across ICS and clinical and ops leads in the ICB. Two sessions thus far.

Please take the time to review:

• The lunchtime learning sessions on digital innovations
• More activities in the coming months to continue conversations about shaping the essentials of the model
• Working on immediate changes and more to do with some of the wider workstreams and training.

If you are interested in this work and want to know more or get involved please reach out to the ICB Primary Care and/or Mental Health Teams via mse.primarycare@nullnhs.net.

Housekeeping

Each of the topic sessions can be completed in any order and do not have to be completed all at once in one sitting.  Any of the topic sessions of interest can be selected by staff, however it is recommended to complete all of the course programme topics in order to gain maximum learning and optimal skills development. The whole course of topic sessions is estimated to take 5 hours to complete. You can stop at any time, returning to the course at your own convenience, where your current position will be stored, allowing you to progress the course until completed.