Council and democracy

Agenda item

Emotional Wellbeing and Mental Health Service Presentation

Minutes:

The North East London Foundation Trust (NELFT) representatives gave a presentation on the Emotional Wellbeing and Mental Health Service (EWMHS) which had gone through a service transformation to bring all the organisations related to mental health and wellbeing under one model. This removed many barriers to enable all staff to become part of one pathway to make a more agile model.

 

With this new model, it created a single point of access (SPA) to ensure help was offered early on and that referrals were allocated to a locality team. From the performance data, it could be seen that the caseload for Thurrock had increased by 267% from November 2015 – November 2017 which indicated that people were becoming more aware of the service. Many of these referrals had come from a parent/carer/relative. The timeframe for assessment of cases ranged from 8 to 18 weeks.

 

The Chair was pleased to see the team building upon its capacity and asked for clarification on the wait times for treatment. The Area Manager for NELFT (AMNELFT), Sharon Hall, stated that the longest waiting time was 21 weeks but this was reducing overtime. The Deputy Director for NELFT (DDNELFT), Gill Burns, added that the EWMHS received a lot of requests around Looked After Children (LAC) which providers were able to do but the system could not keep up. To remedy this, telephone consultations were provided.

 

Councillor Redsell praised the report but hoped this new model worked in real life and not just on paper. She expressed concern on putting a label of mental health on children as at times, this may not be the case. The DDNELFT shared a case of complaint in which a child had been diagnosed with a mental health issue upon the insistence of their parents. The Committee discussed the complexity and issues of mental health labelling. Councillor Redsell pointed out that once a child was given a mental health diagnosis, this would stick with them for life so felt children should not be diagnosed so early on in life. NELFT went on to discuss some cases of this that had circulated around the social media websites. The AMNELFT encouraged the Committee to read the green paper that had recently been published on the mental wellbeing of pupils in schools.

 

Councillor Spillman brought up the use of drugs to cure mental illness and said that Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) and group therapy could cure mental illnesses. He asked what facilities were available for talk therapy instead of drug prescriptions. The DDNELFT responded that evidence around the success of using CBT and other similar therapies were vague. Instead, there was strong evidence around the success of the use of other treatments which were more favourable to use in the course of the treatment of mental illnesses. Councillor Spillman expressed his concern on the lack of facilities to treat those with mental health issues which he worried would become a part of the criminal justice system. The NELFT representatives stated they were turning this around in Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) by bringing in the EWMHS. They aimed to ensure mental health issues were a priority by providing more investment into emotional wellbeing.

 

Councillor Collins asked whether emotional wellbeing life skills were taught in schools to which the AMNELFT replied that it was down to schools to provide these. The Strategic Lead for Learner Support (SLLS), Malcolm Taylor, added that there was also a wider range of programmes in addition to emotional wellbeing, as part of the Collaborative Commissioning Forum, which was being rolled out to schools. There were also a range of other activities including digital portals to support resilience in mental health issues. Referring to pathology, he said that many psychiatrists and mental health professionals would avoid going down the pathology route unnecessarily. They would take into consideration background and parental factors when assessing mental health issues before giving medication. He also mentioned other services such as the Youth Preventative Services which could help to tackle issues at the early stages. These would be taken into consideration when schools would be briefed.

 

The YCC thanked NELFT for their work and said that the Youth Cabinet had worked with NELFT in the past. He hoped to work more with NELFT in the future in raising mental health awareness in schools.

 

The YCC left the meeting at 9.00pm.

 

Referring to page 14 of the presentation, the Chair asked for clarification on what the National Code: 19 meant. The AMNELFT believed it was a code that referred to LAC but would check and let the Committee know.

 

The NELFT representatives left the meeting at 9.03pm.

Supporting documents: