Rosalind Tandy’s message for the public
The last couple of years have been a real exciting time of listening and engaging with our public, our stakeholders and our service users which resulted in the creation of the strategy so we really have a co-produced strategy.
The changes that are being proposed are currently being worked up for four different priorities. We’ve got our CRISIS priority that is our piece of work that is really rolled out first and has been a priority. So already service users are able to contact the first response CRISIS telephone line which is 24/7 and age inclusive that work still continues with our CRISIS resolution home treatment team working. The other three strands are Neuro developmental and Learning disabilities, which is very much set up for supporting people in their community’s, children, families and young people’s pathway, again looks at a much broader more wider system of how we support young people and their families their community setting where it encompasses pretty much 90 percent of the mental health work.
So an example might be in the community setting if you approach your General Practitioner (GP) and actually you may have had mental health issues in the past and have been discharged from services and actually you are feeling really rather quite distressed or are having a lot of problems or you not able to cope and then you want a quick access back in, you may already be on some anti-depressant or psychiatric medication what we’re developing as a team, if need be we can get people who are relapsing back in to help and support from an earlier stage rather than having to meet a threshold or waiting till they are so sick they are then allowed in to a service, it’s about catching people earlier using our support networks in the community to identify people as their slipping downhill sooner rather than later.
And, other ways of working would be certainly improving how we concentrate on those with the severe end of the spectrum of mental illness. It is a known fact that those with severe mental illness will die on average 10 – 15 years sooner than their age correlated people in the population. And this is really something that we can address, by absolutely by working together tackling the physical health, fitness, wellbeing, those markers that increase mortality, smoking, weight, alongside their mental health and by really addressing those with the most severe complex problems by joint working, so involving diabetes specialists, for those who are not engaging with their diabetes we can really try and help improve outcomes for those people who are most severely affected.
Next steps are around continuing the early adopter work in the east and west and refining that model and making sure it’s good to go, for roll out for the rest of Suffolk and while that’s happening we absolutely really need this period of engagement with our staff, our stakeholders and our service users and that’s from September to October. And that’s when we really need your views, we know it’s going to be difficult to see people face to face with COVID and therefore engaging with this on the website, and also we’re going to set up virtual forums so we can interact with public and staff and its really vital now given we’re not able to all meet in one big room all together. And then over the winter period will we distil all that feedback we will work more on the pathways which have already been developed to be shared to refine those so we know exactly how a patient’s journey is going to look from the moment they enter the service. And There’s a lot of work to be done, there’s a lot different presentations and pathways to get through. And Then between sort of winter time and spring and summer we look at finalising all the specifications, producing documents so we know exactly how the service is going to work and how they’re going to be delivered and really if we can reach our goals and targets we will be mobilising our services from June 2021.
So I would say Thank you to everyone who has been involved, I know it feels like it’s been a long hard journey, but I appreciate everyone’s input and it’s important that we keep going building our relationships and working together so that we get the best for our patients, friends and family who all live in Suffolk. So, once again stay engaged, stay safe, Thank you very much.
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