Agenda item

For the Health and Wellbeing Board to be updated on the mental health workstream.

Phil Porter (Strategic Director Community Wellbeing, Brent Council) introduced the report which set out the progress being made on the Integrated Care Partnership’s (ICP) mental health and wellbeing workstream, as one of the four ICP priority areas. He advised the Board that the workstream was split into 4 areas. The first area was around improved access to employment, which began with an outcome based review before the pandemic and focused on ensuring pathways into employment services were clear and easy to access. That part of the workstream also worked to support employers to become disability confident, which would help people access the skills and opportunities needed to get jobs and ensure employers were confident in supporting people in those roles. Mental health and housing formed the second area of the workstream, looking at those people struggling with housing need or who were already homeless and how they could be better supported and how tenancies could be sustained, working with Network Homes and Brent Housing Management. The third area was Children & Young People, including Specialist Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS), which was set up as a reaction to the issues in accessing CAMHS. A meeting of that particular subgroup had took place during that week, where the Director for Safeguarding, Partnerships and Strategy had been positive about having all providers in the room which gave a shared sense of the challenge for Brent. It was hoped the Council, ICP and other providers would continue to work together to reduce waiting lists and give a clear voice back to NWL about what the funding shortfall was. The final area was access to adult mental health services, including IAPT and improving access to health checks. All areas of the workstream were difficult to evidence impact, therefore the ICP were having to define and set up measurements for those, including the social determinants of health.

The Chair thanked Phil Porter for introducing the report and invited comments and questions, with the following issues raised:

• The Board queried whether the ICP were working with ‘Project Search’ as part of their cohort of stakeholders for this workstream, who set up supported internships and worked closely with the NHS. Phil Porter confirmed that Project Search were working with employers in Brent, and there was a long list of operational providers and community groups working with the ICP that had not been included in the report. A lot of the work done on skills and employment was done jointly with the West London Alliance (WLA).
• The Board asked where the ICP hoped to be in six months’ time with the CAMHS waiting lists. Gail Tolley (Strategic Director Children and Young People, Brent Council) confirmed that the ICP anticipated significant progress on that particular workstream. She highlighted that CAMHS was not a Council provision but a health provision, but there was significant strength in the additional provisions of support on offer. Gail Tolley highlighted that CAMHS was a very specialist service and there had, in the past, been some conflation of any mental health support with CAMHS. There had now been some success in moving people away from thinking a mental health issue must be referred to CAMHS, and towards looking to mental health support teams in schools and the additional emotional mental health and wellbeing support the Council could commission jointly with health, for example through the Anna Freud Centre. It was anticipated that there were people on the waiting list for mental health support who would not go on to the CAMHS list as their need would have been met through some other mental health support and specialist provision earlier. Phil Porter added that the aim was for the waiting list to be below 50 by the end of the month, although it was likely this target would be hit at the end of September 2022. He highlighted the details in the report on the ‘waiting well’ initiatives to support people while they were on the waiting list.
• In concluding the update on CAMHS, Phil Porter highlighted the underlying funding and resource issue felt in Brent. Gail Tolley, as the Chair of Brent Children’s Trust (BCT), had written formally to NWL ICS on the issue and the ICP would continue to advocate for more funding for Brent, as Brent had less funding in this area than some other areas in NWL. Jonathan Turner (Borough Lead Director – Brent, NWL ICS) advised that, following the letter from Gail Tolley, Robyn Doran (ICP Director) had scheduled a joint meeting with himself and the Mental Health Lead for NWL to discuss, and there was ongoing dialogue with the Finance Team about levelling up Brent. The main challenge was trying to redistribute funding from one area to another, which was not an easy conversation, but this was being escalated and officers were advocating for resources for Brent. The Chair highlighted that the funding disparity had an impact not just on individuals but on the whole system and asked for the Board to endorse the actions being undertaken to ensure there was levelling up of mental health funding for Brent residents.

RESOLVED: to note the information provided in the paper.