Agenda item

The Head of Mental Health introduced a report that outlined local initiatives and commissioned services that had promoted mental wellbeing and prevented mental health in the Borough. The Officer outlined that there were certain statutory powers and statutory law that governed early intervention and crisis admissions, however that the aim of the preventative services was to promote helping residents at their first point of contact and limiting the need for admissions to secondary services. The Panel was advised that there was a £1million investment in the service and that there was a focus on young people with this funding.

Members asked a range of questions which included service vacancies, recruitment, barriers to accessing primary and secondary care and the impact of barriers to access mental health services upon BAME residents. The Panel was advised that there were four vacant posts (psychiatric nurse positions) within the service and that there had been barriers to recruiting psychiatric nurses. There had been three rounds of recruitment and some of the issues were that the market salary for Slough was not as competitive as those offered in London boroughs. There had been some work conducted with the University of West London to recruit more psychologists from differing backgrounds as this is an area where the service was aware that specialist staff was needed to address language deficit concerns. 

Jenny Chapman addressed the Panel and advised that there had been some difficulties in increasing knowledge of mental health awareness and access to the BAME residents. At present there was 53% uptake access to mental health services, which was stated as being close to matching Slough’s demographic. Work had been carried out such as employing multilingual staff, drop in sessions, leaflets published in several languages, Mother Tongue interpreters and  primary assessments conducted in patient’s preferred language. It was noted that there was more work to be carried out with long term illnesses such as diabetes and that there had been detailed work in Slough currently at local surgeries.

A Member asked about the breakdown of patients and residents who accessed the service previously versus current projected numbers. In 2014/15 the service saw 1,910 patients; in 2016/7 there was a surge of 3605 patients; in 2017/18 (currently) the service has seen 2385 patients and the expected figures for 2018/19 was 2500 patients. After some initial issues with throughput of the service, it was reported that there was now a stable full workforce with good strong management. There had been some issues with accommodation and some of the previous workforce difficulties had stemmed from the nature of the mobile workforce. Most colleagues were now based in hubs or surgeries. Access to the service was currently 16.8% and projected to rise to 18%. As part of the projections under the Five Year Plan, it was estimated that access will rise to 25% by 2020, with a primary focus on diabetes, cardio-vascular disease and breathlessness. The Head of Mental Health also advised of the successes of talking therapy self-referrals which had increased from 0% to 50%. The Board requested that the Head of Mental Health provides statistics in relation to figures provided on p16-17 (‘parity of esteem’) of the report. The Head of Mental Health invited all Members to the mental health event being held at the Curve on the 10^th October.

Resolved-   (a) That the report be noted.

  (b) That a report relating to preventative mental health is heard    at the board meeting to be held on the 18^th January 2018.