Agenda item

Niki Cartwright, Interim Director of Strategy & Commissioning at Slough Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) updated the Panel on the progress of the Berkshire Mental Health Crisis Care Concordat Action Plan.  Partners updated the plan on a quarterly basis and the version circulated was to June 2015.  A further update would be available to the Panel in the new year.

(Councillor Pantelic joined the meeting)

The Concordat was a national agreement between local services and agencies involved in the care and support of people in mental health crisis.  The Panel was updated on the four key elements of the Berkshire Action Plan – access to support before crisis point; urgent and emergency access to crisis care; quality of treatment and care when in crisis; and preventing future crisis by helping people stay well.  Overall progress was considered to be good with most actions rated as ‘green’ or ‘amber’.  Two areas of activity had received a ‘red’ RAG status:

·  ‘The emergency duty service would respond within four hours so that patients receive appropriate care in a timely basis’ – this related to the social services contribution in improving emergency duty response times and was currently being reviewed by the unitary authorities across Berkshire.

·  ‘To maintain a high return on investment in the prevention of drug and alcohol related hospital admissions’ – this was work in progress based on the funding allocation for Drug and Alcohol Action Teams (DAAT) in each local authority in Berkshire.

The Panel discussed a wide range of issues including the metrics or benchmarking data used to evaluate progress against targets/objectives.  It was recognised that many of the actions did not have statistical targets that could be measured in this way, but the information that was collected for relevant actions was requested to be made available to Members so they could better understand how close or far performance was from target.

In view of the recent issues reported in children’s services, a Member asked whether there were any concerns that the Panel should be aware of in terms of the strength of the partnership working arrangements between the signatories across Berkshire to the Concordat.  No concerns were raised.

The issue of the transfer of patients from Slough to Prospect Park was raised.  A representative of Berkshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust commented that resources were in place to support transport to Prospect Park and this service was monitored.  Whilst general concerns on this issue had previously been highlighted in the past, these had not been substantiated, and Members were therefore asked to report any specific concerns or incidents directly to the Trust.  In discussing instances where the Police had transferred patients in emergency situations previously, the Panel requested further information on any trends or statistics on progress made in ensuring appropriate transfer of mental health patients to a place of safety.  Further detail was also requested on the nature of the bespoke training to support mental health patients to 5,000 TVP officers and staff under Point 17 of the Action Plan.

At the conclusion of the discussion, the Panel noted the report and thanked Ms Cartwright for the update.

Resolved –  That the update be noted.