People with mental health issues, learning disabilities and/or autism face stark health inequalities, historic barriers in accessing the service they require, and suffer an increased risk of premature mortality as a result. These poor outcomes and experiences of health and care, and their associated increased mortality rate, are largely preventable.
The solution is often realised by identifying needs early, and offering holistic, joined-up health and care with reasonable adjustments. However, system partners in Northamptonshire recognised that, for this to be achieved, they would need to stop relying on traditional health and care formulas, and instead plan, organise, contractualise, invest and work together differently.
Fortunately, strategic relationships between the (then) clinical commissioning group (Northamptonshire CCG), Northamptonshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust, Voluntary Community and Social Enterprise (VCSE) sector and wider stakeholders were positive and trusting. This allowed a collective approach to the local community through co-production, to ascertain what residents of Northamptonshire wished their mental health and care to work and feel like. The result of a set of workshops and wider consultation was a clear call to action from local residents:
- Shift the focus from outputs to outcomes – measure success on the factors that are most important to the service user.
- Be more person-centred, localised and remove barriers (such as limited opening times, rigid risk thresholds, etc).
- Be agile with how funding is applied to services, allowing existing resource to be moved around the system according to changing needs.
- Be more integrated, so that service users and carers do not have to piece their health and care plans together on their own.
- Be more intelligent – share your skills, knowledge, and data so that service users tell their story once and multi-disciplinary teams can know exactly how/where to help.