- Exciting changes for community mental health
- Major inpatient improvements
- Delivering services during the pandemic
- New perinatal service
- Silver Chief Nursing Officer Award for Julie Wilson
- New Leaf supports food deliveries
- Devon Wellbeing Hub – supporting staff
- Celebrating our achievements
- Lockdown dramatically reduces mileage
Devon is pressing ahead with ambitious plans to improve the way that support is provided for people with serious mental health needs in the community.
At the heart of the plans is a much more joined-up way of working between all of the agencies and organisations involved in supporting people. Closer working with the voluntary sector and the 31 Primary Care Networks (small clusters of GP practices) in Devon is of key importance.
The changes are part of a national initiative called the Community Mental Health Framework (CMHF) which will be rolled-out over the next 18 months. The national timeframe for implementing the programme is three years but, in Devon, we have secured approval to move ahead more quickly. The new approach is based on more localised care, recognising that the mental health needs and priorities in Barnstaple may be very different from those, say, in Torbay.
There will be no ‘wrong door’ for people – whether they speak to a pharmacist, a housing officer, their GP or someone else – mental health support will be available from the most appropriate person or agency. One of our ambitions is to stop people from having to deal with many different teams and undergo multiple assessments, by working across agencies to meet individual needs.
The role of the voluntary sector is one of the keys to success and the plan is to develop a network of Recovery Navigators across the county. Co-production, too, will be central to the design of services and we are working closely with people who have lived experience to ensure that their voices help to shape the changes.
In broad terms, we hope to see increased investment of around £15m and more than 130 new mental health roles will be created across the county. We will see increased investment in the voluntary sector and, in addition to this, we hope to see around 70 new posts within Devon Partnership NHS Trust.
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We have some major work under way at the moment to improve the quality of our inpatient wards for people with mental health needs.
Over the past few months, significant refurbishment work to our older people’s wards in Torbay (Beech) and Barnstaple (Meadow View) has been carried out. The work is now approaching completion and we are expecting both of the wards to re-open in the late summer.
The refurbishments have largely been funded through £6m of national monies to ensure that there is no longer any dormitory or shared-bedroom accommodation within the NHS. Both Beech and Meadow View wards will now provide single occupancy, en-suite bedrooms for everyone. Both wards have also had a general ‘facelift’ to modernise and brighten-up their environments.
In addition, work continues on our brand new ward – Salus ward – on the Torbay Hospital site, which is being built next to Beech ward. Work started on this £12m project last spring and we are expecting it to open early next year. Its 16 beds will bring much-needed additional inpatient capacity to the county for adults with mental health needs and it will provide a bright, modern and therapeutic environment for people using our services and our staff.
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A huge thank you to all of our staff for their inspirational efforts throughout the pandemic. They have responded brilliantly since the emergence of COVID-19 and we have maintained the delivery of all our major services. Our teams have ensured that people have continued to get the support they need – with most people in the community getting help and staying in touch through the increased use of digital technology, although face-to-face contact has been retained where it is of clinical importance.
Our inpatient wards, too, have risen to the challenge, managing admissions and discharges carefully, and adopting all appropriate infection prevention and control measures, including the extensive use of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE). At the organisation-wide level, we also took steps to simplify access to our 24/7 services for people in urgent need or crisis, bolstered our First Response Service, designated COVID-19 and non-COVID-19 sites, designed new pathways of care for people who were confirmed as carrying the virus and created additional local capacity as part of our ‘surge plans’.
In line with the aspirations of the NHS Long Term Plan, we have been establishing a new Maternal Mental Health Clinic (MMHC) in Devon. It offers psychological therapies to mothers who have experienced any form of loss or trauma within the antenatal or postnatal period. It is an important expansion of the wider perinatal mental health services that are available, which include Jasmine Lodge, our specialist Mother and Baby Unit (MBU), and our community and outreach teams. The team will cover the whole county, with Livewell Southwest offering the same service in Plymouth, offering remote sessions to enable all women to access therapy.
Our Perinatal Service Manager, Amanda Taylor, says: “This is a very exciting development for us – and an important addition to the services that are available to support women and their families across the county. In many ways, it plugs a gap that existed for women who require access to specialist support – for example because of trauma related to the loss of a child, separation or any other aspect of the maternity experience.”
The new service will support our other perinatal services including Jasmine Lodge (below) which opened in 2018.
Julie Wilson, our Senior Nurse Manager at Langdon Hospital in Dawlish, was left speechless when she received a Silver Chief Nursing Officer Award from Ruth May, Chief Nursing Officer for England. The silver award recognises major contributions to patients and the profession, for nurses and midwives.
Ruth popped in to a ward meeting, via MS Teams, to surprise Julie and to personally thank her for her leadership, compassion, professionalism and all that she has done during the pandemic and throughout her career. Ruth said that Julie’s leadership skills had been evident from a young age. She joined the St John Ambulance Brigade aged seven and, at 15, led a team to win a national award, going on to represent St John Ambulance in Australia.
Chris Burford, our Director of Nursing and Professions, presented an emotional and overwhelmed Julie with her award. He said: “We are so proud of Julie and she is an outstanding role model. Her values and behaviours shine through every minute of her working day and she inspires others through her belief in caring for patients.” Congratulations, Julie!
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Our New Leaf vocational rehabilitation service was one of several local frontline projects that signed-up for weekly deliveries of food to distribute to vulnerable people during the peak of the pandemic. Although the team is no longer delivering door-to-door, it is still participating in the FareShare initiative and is making-up catering packs for people who are attending the New Leaf site in Exminster as part of their vocational placement. People have the opportunity to engage with cooking by taking home a catering pack and New Leaf offers a ‘guided cooking from scratch with fresh ingredients’ experience. The team is also delivering catering packs to multiple sites in the area, including our Redhills House in Exeter – which supports people experiencing a mental health crisis. The overall project is run by FareShare South West, a charity which redistributes good quality, in-date surplus food, in partnership with Exeter Food Action.
The past year has been very challenging, with COVID-19 having a huge impact on us all, and key workers in a wide variety of roles have been focusing on supporting the wellbeing of others - whether in clinical or non-clinical roles. To ensure that the wellbeing of these staff and their teams is also supported, we have created the Devon Wellbeing Hub with our partners. It is one of 40 NHS mental health and wellbeing hubs that are being set up across the country, funded by NHS England, in response to the impact COVID-19 has had on our workforce.
The Hub provides free, confidential support for individuals and teams in the NHS, healthcare, social care and the police throughout Devon, who are struggling with any element of their wellbeing. People can refer themselves or their teams by phone or email and the service is already being well-used.
After a year like no other, our annual Celebrating Achievement Awards has never been more important – or harder to judge.
The event was held online, but that didn’t dampen the enthusiasm of everyone involved. While much of the media spotlight has been on acute hospitals during the pandemic, our teams also faced huge challenges and responded brilliantly. The awards, hosted by our Chair, Andy Willis, and our Chief Executive, Melanie Walker (pictured above), were a perfect opportunity to celebrate all that our staff and others have done and to highlight some amazing contributions.
After some very difficult judging, the winners included our Urgent Critical Care Hub in Torbay, which was set up at the start of the pandemic to ease pressure on acute hospital Emergency Departments and to reduce the potential spread of the virus.
The Nurse of the Year award went to Joe Nott. Joe championed patients throughout the pandemic, while also compassionately supporting the rest of the team. Coombehaven ward in Exeter won an award for its brilliant response to the pandemic, which saw them transform from a 16-bed ward to providing a treatment and testing ward and an interim isolation unit. Despite these unprecedented challenges, the team still managed to provide superb levels of care and pulled together to keep morale high.
This year’s Board Award was shared between the Infection Prevention and Control team (IPC), the IT team and the Communications team. This recognised the very different, but equally important, efforts of each. While the IPC team kept us safe and provided expert guidance in a constantly changing situation, the IT team enabled us to change our care delivery model and support staff working at home – almost overnight.
Despite being held virtually, the awards ceremony brought us together to share in these achievements and say a big ‘thank you’ to everyone for all that’s been achieved in the past year.
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The COVID-19 lockdown has had a dramatic impact on our mileage and our carbon footprint.
Devon has more miles of roads than any other county in England, so it’s perhaps not surprising that we cover a lot of ground in the average year. In 2019/20 our staff drove more than two million business miles – the equivalent of circumnavigating the world 95 times. However, between April and September 2020 we did just 113,000 business miles, compared with 804,000 for the same period in 2019 – a huge 86% reduction.
Devon Partnership NHS Trust (DPT) provides mental health, learning disability and autism services for Devon (excluding Plymouth). For more information about our work please visit www.dpt.nhs.uk
If you have any queries or suggestions about our Mental Health Matters bulletin, please contact dpn-tr.communications@nhs.net Thank you.
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