Integrated care boards and partnerships across England are exploring ways of modernising their mental health services. This gives local leaders the opportunity to construct a vision that meets the needs of their communities.
Centre for Mental Health is here to support systems to make evidence-informed decisions about their local priorities for mental health. We can work alongside systems to access national and international evidence to guide their plans and strategies. We can facilitate local engagement to ensure that a wealth of views and voices are heard in the creation of priorities and plans. And we can bring an independent perspective to offer values-led, honest, and impartial advice to system leaders.
Our expertise
Centre for Mental Health has significant and evidenced experience of supporting systems, and their predecessor organisations and partnerships, in setting priorities for their mental health services. We have conducted needs assessments, offered strategic support, facilitated deliberations, and offered independent reviews to assist in the development of local plans and strategies.
What we can offer
We offer a range of approaches to help systems to create local strategies to transform their mental health provision. Every system has vastly diverse needs and starting points, and our support will be determined by those.
We can offer one or more of these activities, or similar, depending on what is required locally:
- Stakeholder consultation and intelligence-gathering, building up a picture of a wide range of views and priorities in order to identify shared goals, values, and ambitions
- Facilitating complex system mapping events and producing local reports to feed into strategic planning processes
- Presentations at, or facilitation of, whole system events and engagement sessions, to support system partners in thinking about their aims and aspirations
- Evidence reviews, drawing on research in key areas to identify potential solutions and approaches.
For a discussion regarding your local requirements, get in touch with Jenny Banks at jenny.banks@centreformentalhealth.org.uk
Testimonials
“I’d like to thank you for the brilliant work you’ve done for us, which has really helped us progress our work on the wider determinants of mental health and has shifted the thinking in several parts of our local system.”
– Jilla Burgess-Allen, Director of Public Health, Stockport Council, Greater Manchester
“The work undertaken by Centre for Mental Health, through Andy Bell, has been invaluable in providing knowledgeable, independent, informed, and expert challenge to a complex area of work, comprising a whole system review of mental health, with resultant comprehensive improvement programme. Andy brought real insight and experience from elsewhere to bear on the diagnostic review, interviewing Board members for their views and contributions. His skill and careful approach, with a lightness of touch and good humour, made everyone he dealt with able to give of their best. As a consequence, we have been able to make progress in a comparatively short space of time, with all partners, those with lived experience and carers benefitting from the work supported by Centre for Mental Health.”
– Michael Coughlin, Deputy Chief Executive at Surrey County Council
