Beccy Wardle, Associate Director for ICB Partnerships at Rethink Mental Illness shares her reflections on a busy year at Open Mental Health in Somerset.
At the end of yet another extraordinary year, I find myself both humbled and proud of the enormous achievements of Open Mental Health and of our VCFSE alliance. It is true that working collaboratively can be challenging, emotional and sometimes really tough. It can push us out of our comfort zone, it can seem like progress is slow and we can feel frustration. But it can also often be joyous, inspiring and energising, and can achieve so much more than any of our organisations could hope to accomplish individually. And we have done so much!
During the past year, together, we have:
- provided an average of approximately 2,500 client appointments a month within our core offers
- supported over 2,500 calls a month to Mindline
- supported over 50 peer volunteers through foundation training
- trained paid peer support workers across NHS and VCFSE
- consistently increased uptake of our countywide community crisis provision
- set up a dedicated eating disorder helpline
- launched a webchat function within Mindline
- launched and continued to develop our OMH website
- kept waiting times for support low
- successfully applied for funding to develop our offers for carers
- been awarded funding to develop our offer for older people during the winter period
- rolled out and expanded the Expert by Experience designed and delivered SMI engagement training
- recruited and inducted new Expert by Experience leaders
- won the contract to deliver a new Community Rehabilitation service in partnership with Somerset NHS Foundation Trust
- further developed our metrics dashboard
- launched a new community engagement project focusing on improving our offers for communities that are currently not well served by OMH
- launched We’ve Got This, a new and innovative co-produced peer mentoring project for young people aged 16-25
- developed a new co-produced and streamlined 121 and group support offer across all of OMH
- continued to distribute small grants to develop our Somerset mental health ecosystem
- brought on new VCFSE alliance partners Conquest Centre, Fuse Performance, 2BU and Minehead Eye (with more coming soon…)
- won a national NHSEI award, in partnership with our NHS colleagues!
The backdrop to all of this is that recent internal ICB data for the period April 2019 to June 2022 shows within adult mental health overall there has been a ~15% decrease in Emergency Department presentations and ~10% reduction in admissions. Whilst we can’t absolutely prove there is a causal link to the development of Open Mental Health, it seems likely. The success of the transformation as a whole is also borne out by the recently completed Plymouth University and McPinn Foundation independent evaluation and research, which will be published in due course. There is more to do and the hard work is far from over, Open Mental Health and the work of the VCFSE alliance is by no means perfect, but I think that we can see now that this joined-up, collaborative approach really is working, and is making a difference to the people we all support. We must keep going.
I would like to say a huge thank you to all OMH VCFSE alliance partners, staff members, expert by experience leaders and volunteers. You have all worked exceptionally hard over the past year. You are all amazing and I’m proud to call you all colleagues. Thank you also, to our wider Open Mental Health partners within Somerset NHS Foundation Trust, the ICB and Somerset County Council. Support of the VCFSE sector by our statutory colleagues has never felt stronger and we all continue to learn from each other.