Lynn Cawley, Chief Officer, Healthwatch Shropshire

The Board received the report of the Chief Officer, Shropshire Healthwatch (copy attached to the signed Minutes) which reported on Mental Health Crisis Services for Children and Young People in Shropshire, Telford and Wrekin.  The Chief Officer gave a presentation (copy of slides attached to the signed Minutes).  She firstly thanked the Board for the opportunity to present the report and she thanked the young people, parents and professionals who had shared their opinions. 

She explained that all age mental health had long been a priority of Healthwatch since it was established in 2013 but that this was one of the hardest to reach groups of the population and it highlighted how much reliance was placed upon partners across the system in particular providers when doing pieces of work like this to help promote it so that as many views as possible were captured.

This piece of work was undertaken as a result of the CQC Inspection at SATH and the report in February 2021, when Healthwatch Shropshire was asked by The Director of Nursing to do a piece of work that captured the voices of the children and young people themselves. The Chief Officer gave more context on why this piece of work was undertaken.

As part of the approach and because they particularly wanted to hear from the children and young people themselves, both SATH and MPFT were asked to forward the information to the young people experiencing crisis mental health services.  This was unfortunately not possible and impacted upon the number of children and young people they heard from.  Instead, the usual methods of press release, poster and social media campaign were used to reach out to children and young people, their families and professionals, some of which may not have used crises mental health services referred to in the report.

MPFT felt that there was some confusion amongst the population about which services they were actually usingwhich highlighted the need for better information for children and their families about the services they were using and how they all worked together.

The Chief Officer then drew attention to therange and complexity of the issues and their impact on children’s mental health, along with the range of services available.

One of the young people that they heard from highlighted the issue of waiting times to be seen and described the impact on their mental health but also the impact on them of seeing the psychologist and how much it helped them and enabled them to go back into school and get a place at college.

The Chief Officer explained that they were keen to understand what people felt could make a difference particularly when experiencing a long wait for that specialist provision.  For a lot of young people, it was important that they could see the same person as they did not really want to have to talk about how they were feeling and what they were thinking to lots of different people.  Another comment was the expectation that they would only get treatment when they reached crisis point.

Attention was then drawn to the main issues described by parents/carers, how the help could be improved and the key messages for Shropshire, Telford and Wrekin Integrated Care System.

The Board thanked the Chief Officer for her detailed report and noted that although this piece of work had been completed, the view of children and young people were still being sought.  A comment was made that the report had been difficult to read due to the messages being drawn out.  Board Members queried the next steps and what could be done to move this forward and help those young people who continued to need help and support A further report was requested for a future meeting.

It was confirmed that the Director of Partnerships would be requested to pick this up through the Children and Young People’s and Mental Health conversations so that the 11 key points were built into the conversations being held with providers.  Work would be undertaken in partnership with the local authority from an education point of view as well as a health point of view.  It was suggested that the two Health and Wellbeing Boards (Shropshire and Telford & Wrekin) act as sponsors for this report and to hold the system to account in terms of what was being done to move these key points forward.

It was confirmed that work was ongoing on a Children’s commissioning plan which would be central to systematically picking up these whole-system issues.  A brief discussion ensued around all the issues raised within the report along with the current work being undertaken including looking at other ways to engage children and young people and gather feedback which would inform the work going forward.

It was suggested that a meeting of the Children and Young People System Partnership Board be convened to decide how the 11 recommendations in the report be taken forward and reported on delivery through the Place Based Boards.