Publish date: 13 January 2025
Last week, Caroline Clarke, Regional Director and Emma Christie, Head of Mental Health from NHS London, visited the Ealing North Mental Health Integrated Network Team (MINT) based at the Grand Union Village (GUV) Health Centre in Northolt.
They were joined by the Trust’s Chief Executive Maria O’Brien, Chief Operating Officer (Local and Specialist Services) Dr Chris Hilton and Neha Unakdat, ICB Ealing Borough Director. During the visit, Caroline and Emma heard about the work the Trust has been undertaking over the last four years to implement the Community Mental Health Framework for Adults and Older Adults, including the transformation work and achievements of the teams.
The visit included an opportunity to observe a consultant-led daily clinical multidisciplinary team(MDT) meeting alongside the Borough Service Manager and MINT Associate Director, providing insight into the range of patients managed within the MINT service, and our interfaces with other teams and agencies.
Like all of our nine MINT teams, Ealing North MINT is aligned to a number of Primary Care Network(PCN) neighbourhoods, and supports patients with complex common mental health needs (e.g. depression, anxiety and trauma) as well as severe and enduring mental illness (e.g. bipolar disorder and schizophrenia) with a combination of planned and reactive care.
The North MINT team supports the towns of Northolt, Greenford, Perivale and parts of Hanwell with a combined local population of almost 160,000, of which nearly 1,700 are registered as having severe and enduring mental illness. North MINT has a case load of around 1,300 patients and staff provide approximately 450 appointments per month.
The GUV also hosts the Ealing Community Partners physical health teams as well as GP practices.
Reflecting on her visit, Caroline said: “Thank you for letting us see the really impressive work that your teams are doing in West London. It’s left me with a growing understanding and respect for what you do in the community. I hope that we can help support you into 2025 with the work that we do across London.”
Emma added: “This was a hugely helpful visit which underscored for me the need for us to be able to describe clearly the fantastic work our community mental health teams do caring for some of the most vulnerable members of our community.”
Dr Chris Hilton said: “We were delighted to welcome Caroline to see first-handsome of the complex patients we support through our multidisciplinary community teams. This represents a large group of patients, and the risk and complexity of this group can at times be underestimated.
“The observation of a routine meeting allowed us to illustrate themes around providing assertive whole-person care, and partnership working with carers and families, local authorities and voluntary sector agencies - including those providing substance misuse interventions.
“We’ve invited Caroline to visit us again in the future to see other services, pathway sand teams in the boroughs we serve.”