‘A Rounded Approach’ – Mental Health Summit

On 12 June 2016 the Care Quality Commission published a report labelling mental health crisis care in England as ‘inadequate’ and warned that the system is ‘struggling to cope’. Commenting, the Chief Executive of the Mental Health Foundation said: “We need to be thinking about the ways we can help people from reaching a crisis point.”  and suggests that “The failure to take a rounded approach which focuses on public mental health as well as providing access to care means that reports likes this one will keep on coming.” 

Increasing access to mental health care is key to plans to ensure that mental and physical health services are integrated and given equal priority by 2020, but how to do this with ever less resource is a challenge that will impact across all sectors.

Aiming to stimulate discussion around what a rounded approach could look like locally Chelmsford, Maldon, Braintree and Rayleigh & Rochford CVSs hosted a half day Summit at Chelmsford City Football Club on Monday 25 April 2016. 86 local service professionals attended and 9 mental health services exhibited.

The day was opened by Cllr Graham Butland, Cabinet Member for Health, Essex County Council, followed by keynote speaker; Dr. Caroline Dollery. Dr. Dollery has helped develop and lead mental health leadership across the east of England, and is now Clinical Director for the East of England Strategic Clinical Network for mental health, dementia, neurology, learning disability and autism.

Members of the Crisis Resolution and Home Treatment Team, Mid Essex Community Mental Health Services, North Essex Partnership, spoke about the challenges they face, the current pathways to services across Mid Essex and how we can access services in the future and

An animation produced by the King’s Fund: An Alternative Guide to Mental health Care was shared. Experiencing a mental health problem will be different for everyone, as will the type of support needed; the animation can be viewed below:

Delegates, who work in the field of mental health or advice, across all sectors, spent the rest of the morning exploring the impact of changes to delivery. They also helped to identify gaps and, with the help of facilitators, we were able to gain a better understanding, between sectors, to allow for potential partnership working.

Focused workshops at the event, through table discussions, explored how we can work better together to enhance local services to help prevent the system failing people with mental health problems.

A comprehensive outcome evaluation can be found here.

We have uploaded photos of the event to our Flickr page, click here to view them. Please feel free to download and share them on your website or social media sites.