Community Mental Health Framework Pilot Evaluation

Background

NHS England has identified 12 pilot sites across England to test potential models of delivery of community mental health services. This innovative programme offers a unique opportunity to identify and put into place work within the community which gives opportunities for collaboration across third sector, social care alongside mental health services. The policy initiative places the person at the centre of a needs led delivery of care within the system as a whole creating opportunities to change the culture of mental health service delivery.

Overview

We’ve developed a consortium with 3 community pilot sites, East London, Hertfordshire and West Essex, and Somerset alongside a central evaluation team. Together we will co-produce an evaluation that works alongside NHSE reporting requirements as well as allowing us to share learning between sites in the consortium in real time.

The emphasis will be on rapid feedback to support site development, but the evaluation will also have an element of research in that generalisable knowledge of value to the NHS as a whole will also be produced.

We plan to develop a programme that will capture lessons, chart the successes and challenges of implementing this novel approach to care whilst working as a team to contribute to the knowledge base about how to improve mental health care for all in a community setting.

Aims

The aim of the evaluation collaboration is to maximise the learning opportunity provided by community pilots to improve mental health services across England. The scientific aims of the research evaluation are:

To understand how the community pilots can provide more effective care to the client group who do not meet the threshold for secondary mental health services but are deemed inappropriate for primary care services such as IAPT.
To identify how community pilots engage with and deliver more effective services to those client groups identified within their services as key areas of development i.e those with a personality disorder, eating disorder or in need of rehabilitation services etc.
To explore the role of local collaborations across a range of agencies in the transformation of service provision in each site.
To understand the key characteristics which contribute to effective implementation.
To gain a better understanding of the needs of the workforce across statutory agencies and VCSE’s.
To understand how the new models of service delivery are supporting the reduction of health inequalities.
To identify how the culture change process can be assisted during implementation.