Publish date: 24 July 2024
This month the Mental Health Integrated Network Teams (MINT) will mark their third anniversary. Over the past three years the service led by Dr Julia Renton, Clinical Director for Community and Recovery Mental Health services (CARMHS) and MINT staff have been working hard to provide community based mental health care.
The MINT services aim to support people locally. Helping them to better manage their mental health and move towards recovery on their own terms, surrounded by their families, carers, social networks, and supported in their local community. It aims to work alongside community services; helping people develop meaningful lives to sustain their recovery.
To mark the anniversary, the service is sharing their insights into the background and developments over the past three years.
Reflecting on the work and journey the MINT service has been on, Dr Christopher Hilton, Chief Operating Officer (Local and Specialist services) said:
“I’d like to take this opportunity to thank all the MINT service staff for their hard work, commitment and dedication to providing caring, effective and safe services for our service users and their loved ones.
We undertook a stocktake of the MINT project over the past few months, and have shared our learning externally, which acknowledged that significant progress has been made over the past three years – and this is thanks to your efforts.
We know there is a lot more work for us to do, to make sure the service becomes sustainable and is able to meet the changing needs of the communities we serve, and including in ensuring we are supporting the right cohort of patients and are able to attract and retain talented colleagues."
Dr Julia Renton, Clinical Director for Community and Recovery Mental Health services said:
“It has been a very busy three years and we have undoubtedly learnt a lot! The impact of Covid-19 was more significant on the health of our population than any of us anticipated. Coupled with the size of our transformation, services struggled to align demand and capacity, and patients waited longer as a result.
Additional management support, new processes, new staffing and a focus on getting people seen faster have all led to significant improvements in MINT. Our staff are undoubtedly our best asset and their engagement will lead the MINT teams to continue their improvement process over the year ahead."
Background
In September 2019 the government paper “The Community Mental Health Framework for Adults and Older Adults” was published and suggested the existing community model of care was in urgent need of transformation and modernisation.
In December 2019, West London NHS Trust submitted a bid to be considered as an early implementer site for a new service. The Trust was selected and other mental health providers are now following this transformation process.
Key service achievements
Since its inception there has been a number of service achievements delivered by the team.
- Additional roles including medical, clinical psychology, nursing, OT, link and peer worker/graduate mental health workers, community pharmacist and matron roles have been created in all boroughs.
- In the last 12 months’ staff recruitment has significantly improved with a huge reduction in vacancies (30% to 11%).
- The Trust and the Primary care networks (PCN) have jointly recruited 18 Mental Health Additional Role Reimbursement scheme (MHARRS) roles.
- The team have developed an 18-25-year-old dedicated support pathway with specialist young people working as link workers, who support a smooth transition from Children and Adolescents Mental Health Services (CAMHS) to the MINT teams.
- GPs have championed the use of a shared electronic patient record system (EPR) for the MINT teams, of which we will complete our move to this system in Autumn 2024.
Service improvements
There has been a number of challenges establishing a service of this kind during a pandemic. The team have had to tackle higher than expected referral rates, particularly post pandemic, as well as system issues migrating fully to SystemOne.
Recruitment and retention - Efforts are ongoing to recruit more staff, to ensure our teams can robustly meet the changing needs of the communities we serve.
Joined up care to support patient needs - Working in partnership with colleagues in the primary care network and partnering with community organisations, ensures patients can access a range of offers before engaging with specialist mental health services. The teams are work closely alongside Talking Therapies services.
Feedback from our patients and partners
Feedback from our patients and partners is crucial for continuous improvement.
A patient said:
“This [staff member] has helped me through incredibly turbulent times: from homelessness, the death of my brother, hospital stays, employment issues, COVID-times, as well as my mental health condition(s). I trust this person 100%. That is unusual for me! When I’ve been at my most unwell and my most distressed, I’ve felt I could trust this person even when I couldn’t trust anyone or anything else. I wouldn’t be here alive today if it weren’t for you -Thank you.”
Dr Ajan Sivanesan, Clinical Director from South Southall Primary Care Network (PCN) said:
"Mint has been actively involved with South Southall PCN, and is an integral part of the team. It is a pleasure working with Dr Raquin, Dr Bench, and Greg. We hope to further work with MINT to increase South Southall PCN referrals. Congratulations and thanks for all the support."
To find out more about the MINT service please visit the website.