Now called ‘Better Mental Health for All’, our programme of change for mental health services started life as the ‘All Age Transformation Programme’ in 2017. It was the start of a five-year journey to transform the care we deliver through our mental health services, by co-designing improvements with service users, carers, staff and other key stakeholders.
Our transformation journey was inspired by Northumberland Tyne and Wear NHS Foundation Trust as they transformed to become an ‘outstanding’ rated Trust. We have adapted their methodology to suit our local area and are looking to create a radical difference in the way we support people who need mental health services.
The Five Stages
The All Age Transformation Programme had five stages:
Stage one
What excellent mental health services would look like. We consulted widely with more than one thousand people from across Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland and used their comments and suggestions to form a set of principles that set out what we need to deliver through the transformation.
Stage two
Using the principles from stage one, we engaged with service users, carers, staff and stakeholders to develop a high-level pathway which gave us an outline of the services we need and how they should operate.
Stage three
We used the high-level pathway to produce the detailed designs. This included what our services should look like, how they should run and the resources they need. New intervention pathways were developed as part of this co-design work. The pathways are designed to increase consistency of the treatment offered across teams and support service users in being better informed around their likely journey with our services. The outputs of all of this co-design work has been compiled into 13 key design features.
We then worked with our staff to look at how we could organise and structure our mental health and learning disabilities teams to best deliver the 13 key design features, including the new intervention pathways.
Stage four
At the end of stage three, all the co-design work and outputs were compiled to form a draft new model proposal for our Trust’s mental health services. During 2020, we made a decision to consult with the public about our proposed changes and we started the formal consultation in May 2021, a project that our commissioners are running. The results of the consultation will be analysed and included in our draft model at stage five.
Stage five
The public consultation was approved in December 2021. There followed a Decision Making Business Case and a Report of Findings. These documents have informed the final stages of the transformation of mental health services across Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland.
Visit our consultation website for more information about how we are transforming mental health services or you can contact the Transformation Team to find out more: lpt.transformationteam@nhs.net.