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Agenda item

Priority for 2018/19: Promote Positive Mental Health and Wellbeing for Adults

For the Board to receive an update from the Mental Health Action Group's Independent Chair on progress to deliver identified actions to support the Board’s priority for 2018/19: Promote positive mental health and wellbeing for adults.

Minutes:

The Board received a presentation (Agenda Item 9) regarding an update from the Mental Health Action Group (MHAG) on work undertaken to support the Board’s priority for 2018/19 to ‘promote positive mental health and wellbeing for adults’.

Matthew Braovac introduced himself as the independent chair of the MHAG and advised that he had joined the group in February 2018. He noted that the MHAG had reported four key workstreams at their last presentation in November 2018 and would provide an update on each.

Community Navigation and Peer Support.

The MHAG had stated that they would ‘celebrate, promote and connect existing resources especially those who provide Community Navigation and Peer Support.’ The MHAG had influenced the specification for the Village Agent scheme, now known as Village Agent Community Navigators; the service would now be more focussed on social isolation and loneliness. Anyone over 18 would now be eligible to access their support when previously anyone referred would need to be over 55.

Berkshire West Your Way had been commissioned by the CCG and would expand into West Berkshire from Reading from the 1st June 2018. MHAG had provided practical support regarding venues, contacts, facilities and existing partners.

Digital Community Resource Directory.

The MHAG had been working with colleagues in Adult Social Care to shape the upgrade of the Social Care Information Point (SCiP) to ensure that information was accessible to those with mental health concerns.

The Emotional Wellbeing West Berkshire website was also being revamped and would be connected with SCiP. Service users would be trained to run the website as a self-support tool.

While the overall digital offer for health and wellbeing services was being considered by another group, the MHAG felt it was important to expedite these processes in order to ensure the availability of information.

Co-produced review into patients’ experience of crisis.

Previous Thinking Together events had raised the issue of crisis. A further event was held on 22 March 2018 which sought to understand concerns better. It had been interesting that professionals and service users often defined crisis differently. Service users sought more empathy in dealing with professional services but also recognised the pressure that front line workers were under and thought that they should be supported better.

Preventable deaths of people with serious mental illness.

Matt Pearce, Head of Public Health and Wellbeing, noted that the MHAG had identified that West Berkshire may be an outlier in the number of preventable deaths from physical health conditions of people with serious mental illness (SMI). Nationally, people with SMI died 10-25 years earlier than their counterparts. Dr Angus Tallini had conducted an audit into 38 patient records and identified that 22% of premature deaths were due to cancers not amenable to screening. Alcohol was a direct or indirect factor in 28% of deaths. This was contrary to national literature which suggested that cardiovascular causes were the main factor in preventable deaths of people with SMI.

The audit recommendations included maintaining a focus on reducing alcohol related harm, smoking cessation (as 80% of people with SMI smoked) and better targeting of Healthchecks and lifestyle interventions.

Matthew Braovac outlined that the MHAG’s next steps were:

·         Reviewing existing ‘community connector’ activity and providing ‘on the ground’ input for Berkshire West Your Way.

·         Contributing to wider digital community resource plans.

·         Developing an action plan to support individuals with SMI.

·         Providing recommendations to the HWBB Strategy.

·         Working with the Skills and Enterprise Partnership to improve workplace access for vulnerable people.

Councillor Mollie Lock stated she would like the group to ensure there was early intervention services for children under the age of 18. Matthew Braovac advised that the MHAG’s remit was regarding adults. Matt Pearce advised that no work to support children would be stopping and the group needed to focus their attention. Councillor Marigold Jacques drew attention to the Emotional Health Academy and the ‘Little Ray of Sunshine’ booklet produced by the CCG.

Councillor Graham Bridgman asked whether the causes of early death found in the SMI audit were the same as the majority of the population and people with SMI were more likely to die earlier. He also asked to what extent cancers experienced by people with SMI were preventable if they were not amenable to screening. Matt Pearce responded that cancer was the biggest cause of death in those aged under 65. The cause of early death in people with SMI was expected to be cardiovascular but this was not found in the audit. He also explained that cancers not amenable to screening could still be prevented by a number of lifestyle factors.

Andrew Sharp noted that mental health was such a broad area the MHAG had needed to focus its work and the Children’s Delivery Group which reported to the Board oversaw the children’s element of mental health. As a former co-chair of the MHAG he wished to reflect that a key thing to ensuring the group had pace was membership and members sending deputies if they were unable to attend meetings. He stated that as care for mental health was increasingly provided in and by the community, there needed to be confidence that the voluntary and community sector was able to deliver that support. Regarding crisis, Andrew Sharp noted that for physical health crises a patient could expect a team of people to support them at Accident and Emergency; for a mental health crisis a patient might find a flashing answerphone.

Dr Bahia noted that at the Health and Wellbeing Steering Group, the chairs of the Board’s sub-groups came together and shared information on cross-cutting themes.

RESOLVED that the report and presentation be noted.

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