Agenda item

Report of Ian Renwick, Chief Executive Gateshead Health NHS Foundation Trust and Julie Ross, Director of Integration across the health and care partners in Newcastle and Gateshead.

The Committee received a report and verbal update from Ian Renwick, Chief Executive of Gateshead Health NHS Foundation Trust and Julie Ross, Director of Integration across the health and care partners in Newcastle and Gateshead.

The report identified the increased scope of the Deciding Together, Delivering Together programme to include older people’s mental health services delivered by Gateshead Health Trust in addition to social care and voluntary sector services. (The original programme was limited to Northumberland Tyne and Wear Mental Health Trust services only).

The Committee were updated about the Deciding Together process, which was led by the CCG, and involved asking people who use mental health services, their families, carers, mental health professionals and service providers for their views on improving the way specialist adult mental health services are arranged in Gateshead and Newcastle; it culminated in a listening exercise held during winter 2014/15 was published in April 2015.

The Committee were reminded that in March 2016, a joint scrutiny meeting between Newcastle and Gateshead considered the findings. In June 2016, the CCG governing body considered the findings of the Deciding Together process and the public consultation and made its decision about the future of the services.

Following the CCG decision work began to understand how to best implement the decision and on 1 February 2017, a stakeholder workshop was held to identify those next steps.  The workshop group in February 2017 proposed to work in a collaborative way to redesign the pathways for adults and older people in Newcastle and Gateshead who have urgent (in its broader sense) and more complicated/intense mental health needs by December 2017.

The redesign work will cover all adult and older peoples mental health services in Gateshead and Newcastle; this recognises that the Deciding Together scope was limited to NTW provided services and that was not sufficiently broad to redesign services to meet the mental health needs of the population. The increased scope therefore means covering the Gateshead and Newcastle provision of:

·         All NTW provided adult and older people’s services

·         Gateshead health provided older people’s mental health services (new to scope)

·         Third sector services, community and voluntary service services (new to scope)

·         Social care services (new to scope)

Work is now underway to design the community based adult and older people’s mental health services in both Gateshead and Newcastle.

The scope of the work covers the following:

·         Gateshead and Newcastle localities

·         NTW provided adult and older people’s services

·         Older people’s mental health services in Gateshead

·         Third sector mental health services, and the wider community and voluntary sector

·         Social care and other local authority services

·         Interface with GP services

·         Interface with employment and housing

Two stakeholder events will be held in July and then four week long workshops during September and October, which the Vice Chair, Councillor Marilyn Charlton will attend on behalf of the OSC.

The Mental Health Programme Board, which comprises a range of service users, carers and small providers as well as the larger statutory bodies, is providing advice on how best to engage with the wider community through the process. Three interlinked work programmes have also been established to assist in the process:-

·         Resources review group

·         Stakeholder views group, and

·         Design group (to include design community services and design inpatient delivery)

The Committee were advised that regular updates will be provided and NTW will be asked to attend a future meeting of the OSC to provide an update on their stream of work.

The Chair thanked Ian and Julie and offered any support necessary from members of the Committee in working together.