Anne Humphreys’ message for the public
So, over the last couple of years, we’ve spent time as coproduction partners and as organisations across Suffolk, talking to service users, carers, staff, members of the public about what’s working and what isn’t working within mental health services across Suffolk.
Lots and lots of people have told us and given up their time to share what’s worked and what hasn’t worked and what they think needs to change.
So we spent a lot of time pulling together those thoughts and producing our strategy. And then once our strategy was produced, we then needed to start turning the strategy into a reality. So we need to start designing those pathways, what they’re going to look like and what they’re going to look like for those who use services and those who care for them. And we spent a long time, it’s been really tricky at times because we know that so much needs to change.
What we think we now have are some pathways that reflect what people have told us.
It’s always helpful to give some examples. So for children young people we know that they need time to be able to open up to professionals, we know that they need time to build trusted relationships, and we know that for a lot of young people the place where they have most interaction is in schools, so we know that we have got teams within some schools within Suffolk and we’re going to build on that.
So we’re going to have teams placed within locality areas so based on Suffolk County Council’s children’s services areas, that means that young people will be able to be seen in the places close to where they live and that the expertise that’s needed to support them will be brought into those areas so they won’t be having to traipse off to other parts of Suffolk to be able to be seen, they won’t be passed from team to team so they will have core people around them supporting them and then the extra help that is needed will come in.
That’s going to be a fundamental change to how things are and that’s going to make things better.
So, we know that it’s a really big piece of work to transform mental health services in Suffolk, it won’t happen overnight because the changes are so big that we can’t start them all at once. But we are absolutely committed to implementing everything that we have designed.
So, thank you to everybody that has contributed over the last couple of years we couldn’t have got to this point without you. Thank you to all of those who have been part of the Co-production and we now really need you to help us once more.
So the next steps are we are going to publish the pathways that have been designed following listening to what everybody has said, there’s going to be a survey that people can take part in and this is really crucial we need your voices and we need your help whether you’re a member of the public, whether you’re a staff member, whether you’re a service user, whether you’re a carer, we need to know have we translated what you said correctly, have we truly listened to you and turned what you said into pathways. And fundamentally is this going to make things better? Because if it’s not going to make things better, we need to change the pathways. They’re not fixed they’re up for change, they’re up for change because we need to do the right thing for service users and carers but we can’t do that without you so we need you to tell us whether this is going to work and what we’ve missed, if anything. We really need your help.
You can find more information on the #averydifferentconversation children, young people & families page.
