Agenda item

12.1

The Board received a report from Nicki Doherty Deputy Chief Executive and Director of Strategy and Operations, Primary Care Sheffield, Prof. Damian Hodgson, University of Sheffield and FionaGoudie, Clinical Director, Sheffield Health and Social Care NHS Foundation Trust,concerning the primary and community mental health transformation. The Programme was designed to offer care at neighbourhood level, built around Primary Care Networks (PCNs). The report to the Board outlined the findings of the evaluation of the programme by the University of Sheffield. 

12.2

There were 7 key themes from the evaluation of the programme, and these were outlined in the evaluation report and summary:

• The Programme was successful in reaching marginalised groups and tailoring mental health care to match local need.
• The Programme benefitted from strong engagement with general practice.
• The Programme faced challenges managing the scale of demand.
• The Programme also faced some challenges integrating with secondary and specialist mental health services.
• The VCSE (voluntary, community & social enterprise) partners were important to the Programme and had the potential to make a greater contribution in the future.
• The effectiveness of the Programme relied on the flexibility and innovation of the staff in delivering care.
• All staff identified key challenges in rolling out the service so that it could be sustainable at scale.

12.3

The Board was informed that the recommendations from the programme would be progressed through the Joint Executive Board between Sheffield Health and Social Care, the PCNs and Sheffield Mind and the Transformation Board.

12.4

The Board commented on the programme, including the level of complexity for people with a mental health condition and the management of that in primary care. Learning from the programme indicated that the programme was locally sited and that helped to make the services accessible and for the different partners to build relationships and enable flexibility through a team approach, which empowered practitioners to be more innovative.

12.5

The cohort was adults with serious mental health conditions and often with significant comorbidities, physical health challenges, economic and housing issues. This was a process evaluation over 12 months and not an outcome evaluation. A further evaluation was needed to measure the impact on people’s mental health in the longer term. Qualitatively, service users interviewed were very positive. Mental Health outcomes were not as well developed as other acute pathways, such as for a stroke.

12.6

Further work would be needed on connections with the future design of social care and how the learning from the programme was taken into neighbourhoods. The programme had been a very positive partnership and was also influencing and linking into other transformation at Sheffield Health and Social Care. The timeline for the programme to link into other PCNs was likely to be October 2023, although this would be a challenge and there was a significant amount of change management to do. Waiting lists gave useful insight into the scale of unmet need and it would be useful to use that information and for non-medical elements to also do a piece of work on how people and their families might be supported.

12.7

The Board noted the report concerning the Primary and Community Mental Health Transformation.