News

March 2020

Herefordshire’s Mental Health/Learning Disability Services

On April 1st the Trust will take over delivery responsibility for Herefordshire’s mental health and learning disability services. It will build on the relationships developed over the last few years through the local Sustainability and Transformation Partnership, and there will be lots of opportunities to share good practice and for all teams and staff to learn from each other. We are really excited about welcoming staff from Herefordshire mental health and learning disability teams to our Trust and throughout March we are holding induction days to ensure all staff are prepared for the transfer.

Trust Rename

To better reflect our expanding portfolio we are considering a name change. We want a name which reflects the services we will be providing, the staff we will be supporting, and the communities we will serve and have come up with five options which we want views on. We want as many views as possible so please take a few minutes to look at the options and let us know your preference: https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/WHCTNameChange. Our Trust Board will then agree a final option in May 2020.

Transforming Community Mental Health Services

Herefordshire and parts of Worcestershire will be one of only a handful of areas across the country piloting a new way of providing mental health services within the community. The new model will be embedded within GP practices and if you need mental health care you will get an appointment with the right team and have a care plan in place within 4 weeks.

The new model aims to make it easier for people to access the right mental health service, first time and then to get the help and care they need throughout their recovery journey. In the new model, which will go live in April, there will be no referrals between teams, and no discharges… instead people will be able to more seamlessly move between teams depending on their level of need. Once support is no longer required, they will be able to get back into treatment quickly if they start to relapse without having to see a GP first and start the process all over again.

Starting Well Partnership

Our new Starting Well Partnership is set to go live in April, improving the overall service and support available to children, young people and families throughout Worcestershire. The partnership brings together Worcestershire Health and Care NHS Trust, Barnardo’s, Action for Children and Redditch Borough Council. It will improve links and partnerships with other related services, for example children’s mental wellbeing teams and speech and language support, and will work much more closely with schools to ensure young people are getting the overall help they need as they grow up. We will run 9 new Family Hubs across the county which will be home to activities which will support families, including Birth and Beyond groups. In addition a new Starting Well website will launch in April providing lots of useful information, from infant feeding and sleeping, through to school readiness and mental wellbeing support.

Children’s Short Breaks

Also in April our new model for providing overnight short breaks services for children with disabilities will launch. Key to the new service will be an expansion of our unit at Osborne Court in Malvern. It already provides similar services for adults, and has large outdoor areas, sensory rooms and a hydrotherapy pool and its redevelopment will enable more children and families to use the service. It will mean that the unit at Ludlow Road in Kidderminster will close. We are currently finalising the work at Osborne Court and are working with the families affected to ensure a smooth and safe transfer from Ludlow Road.

Out of Hours Dental Service

Our Community Dental Team provide a range of services for people who can not access mainstream dental services. On top of this we provide urgent out of hours dental clinics for anyone who needs emergency dental care at weekends or on Bank Holidays. These were recently reviewed as part of a commissioning exercise led by NHS England. We currently provide out of hours service from Kidderminster, Evesham and Worcester, but due to a reorganisation of provision across the region, the out of hours (weekends and Bank Holiday) services from Kidderminster and Evesham will stop at the end of March. The out of hours service in Worcester will also transfer to a new provider. However the Trust was successful in being awarded the contract to provide a new out of hours service in Redditch. Access to urgent out of hours dental services will be via NHS111 from April 1st

Introducing DadPad

Our Now We’re Talking campaign to raise awareness of our local Healthy Minds service has led to a massive increase in the numbers of people self-referring for support for their anxiety or stress. The campaign is now evolving and we are doing some work raising awareness of perinatal mental health. As part of this work we have just launched a new online resource called DadsPad. It is an information pack developed by dads for dads is helping fathers in Herefordshire and Worcestershire prepare for family life and tackles the mental health issues which can affect new parents. It covers a range of issues, such as the support dads can give while mums are breastfeeding, being aware of perinatal mental illness and the anxiety and frustrations that come with parenthood, as well as hands-on advice on issues like nappy changing. Its aim is to provide new fathers across Herefordshire and Worcestershire with guidance on how to develop the mind-set, confidence and practical skills needed to meet their baby’s physical and emotional needs.

DadPad can be downloaded via the App store or Google Play

Friends and Family Test

NHS England and NHS Improvement have issued new guidance in relation to the Friends and Family Test (FFT) that will be implemented from 1 April 2020. The FFT is a way of patients and families/carers providing quick and easy feedback on a service, based around whether they would recommend the services they’ve used. The main FFT question “How likely are you to recommend our service to friends and family if they needed similar care or treatment?” is changing and will be replaced with the following question and new response scale:

“Thinking about the service we provide.  Overall, how was your experience of our service?”

• Very good
• Good
• Neither good nor poor
• Poor
• Very poor
• Don’t know

The current system will remain in place until the new process is implemented from 1 April 2020. 

Date for your diary: Community Educational Event – Chronic Fatigue

Every few months the Trust organises a community educational event to raise awareness of a service or condition. Our next event will be on May 14^th at St Peters Baptist Church in Worcester on the subject of Chronic Fatigue where our expert clinical leads will aim to dispel some of the myths and provide useful help and advice for people living with the condition, carers, and professionals. Further information will be available shortly, including specific timings, but if you’re interested in finding out more contact tneal@nhs.net

Flooding response

February has brought lots of travel disruption as a result of widespread flooding. While this brings inevitable challenges to our community teams our staff have shown fantastic individual resilience and collective commitment to minimise the impact on our patients and services. It meant that all our patients received the care they needed and with the exception of Tenbury’s Minor Injury Unit all our hospitals and healthcare centres remained open and staffed. Huge thank you to all our community nurses and therapists, including our mental health teams and overnight teams, for battling the elements to ensure our patients and service users received the care they needed. 

Planning for Coronavirus

Anyone who feels they may have contracted the Coronavirus should contact NHS111 in the first instance. If testing/assessment is required we, along with our partners, have plans in place to carry out tests either in the community or via one of our treatment/assessment pods which are in our minor injury units.