South London Mental Health and Community Partnership (SLP)

The 'South London Mental Health and Community Partnership' is a new and innovative collaboration between three leading mental health trusts.

The 'South London Mental Health and Community Partnership' is an innovative collaboration between three leading mental health trusts.

Mental illness is the single largest cause of disability in the UK and each year about one in four people suffer from a mental health problem. The cost to the economy is estimated to be around £100 billion annually and with physical and mental health closely linked people with severe and prolonged mental illness die on average 15 to 20 years earlier than other people.

The NHS Five Year Forward View (October 2014), recognised that there is no one-size fits all and set out the challenge for leading NHS trusts to respond to the needs of the community by working together to deliver a better NHS for patients.

As a result Oxleas NHS Foundation Trust, South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust and South West London and St. George’s Mental Health NHS Trust are working together to spearhead a better mental health service across south London. This partnership is called the South London Mental Health and Community Partnership.

The partnership is the first of its kind in London and brings together the clinical expertise of thousands of NHS staff to help identify areas of best practice that will be rolled out consistently across south London in order to deliver a shared vision to improve patient care, the foundation stone of this partnership.

The three chief executives are dedicated to leading high quality changes across South London so that patients continue to receive high quality care for generations to come as a result of this partnership. They believe that this pro-active approach will no doubt become the blueprint for sustainable mental health services across the country, ensuring patients continue to receive high quality care for generations to come. By delivering a smarter and more joined up way of working, quality can be increased and costs driven down whilst protecting service.

Annual Review 2018-2019

Our Innovative and collaborative work to make a difference for mental health patients and staff in three Trusts across south London is highlighted in the South London Mental Health and Community Partnership (SLP) Annual Review for 2018 - 2019.

SLP’s first full year 2017-2018 included more south London children and young people, and Forensic adult patients cared for and supported towards rehabilitation and recovery closer to home. This year SLP focused on adding value and driving improvements to patient experience and outcomes by working collaboratively at system level across south London’s million population.

We have continued to innovate and expand our integrated approach to delivering patient-centred services. This includes new and deeper partnership with Local Authorities, Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs), Sustainability and Transformation Partnerships (STPs) and NHS England (NHSE). New relationships with south London’s universities, and with housing providers, are helping us bring specialist solutions to some of the most challenging mental healthcare issues.

The SLP Annual Review covers partnership working by clinical, operational and corporate services colleagues during 2018-19 through a series of key programmes focussed on improving patient care, experience and outcomes.

Highlights include:

• Forensic patients out of area reduced by 36%
• Nursing workforce retention rate improved by 5%+
• CAMHS out of area bed days reduced by 7.8%
• More than 100 new Nursing Associates on development programmes
• New and enhanced services including: Complex Care Clinical Assessment Team, CAMHS Shared Bed Management Service, Community Forensic LD/ASD Service, additional Adult Forensic Beds

SLP programmes include:

• CAMHS Tier 4 New Care Models
• Forensic (Adult Secure) New Care Models
• Complex Care: improving recovery closer to home for patients typically with complex mental health needs and multiple, long-term conditions, including challenging behaviours, who have often experienced high lengths of stay in restrictive settings
• Nursing Development Programme
• Adult Care Pathway: aiming to improve patient care, outcomes and experience for people with acute or urgent mental health needs, including reducing A&E attendances, admissions to our inpatient wards and inpatient length of stay
• Adult Eating Disorders: emerging new programme
• Corporate Service Productivity and Efficiency

In recent months, further impacts have included:

• 32% overall reduction in south London children and young people’s overall bed days in mental health hospitals
• Significant reductions in A&E attendances and suicide attempts by young people receiving new DBT interventions in south east London;
• Agreement by CCGs to transfer complex patient budgets to the SLP Trusts
• Introduction of consistent south London-wide Single Point of Access and assessment panels for health-funded complex care patients
• Developing innovative new Community Forensic Support Plus service.to help male Forensic patients with high lengths of stay in restrictive settings live more independently, with extended, multi-disciplinary team support

Partnership work was also shortlisted for three major national awards in late 2019: NHSI/Burdett Trust award for nursing – Retention Team of the Year (NDP); Royal College of Psychiatry Awards – Sustainable Service Development (Forensic New Care Models); and for System Leadership in the HSJ 2019 Awards.

Work is also underway through the NHS England Specialist Commissioning ‘Provider Collaboratives’ policy for full transfer of commissioning budgets for Adult Secure, CAMHS Tier 4 and Adult Eating Disorders services to the Trusts in April. This means we can together decide how to best use resources, develop and deliver services to provide best quality care and improve patient outcomes

You can read more about the SLP’s work in 2017-18 and plans for 2018-19 in this Annual Review.

Get involved - make a difference

If you want to help us make a difference, please think about getiing involved with the Trust services.

Getting involved means that you will be helping the Trust to develop services that really meet the needs of people with mental health problems and their carers. You can also help us to make sure that our services are safe, caring, effective, well-led and responsive.

Anyone who has lived experience of mental health problems or has experience of caring for a relative or friend is welcome to share their expertise with us in a number of ways:

• Providing personal feedback on services
• Joining our Patient Quality Forum or our Carer’s Friends and Family Reference Group
• Joining our recruitment panels
• Sharing your views in planning workshops
• Joining research groups
• Taking part in service visits such as 15 Steps and quality improvement reviews

Training and support is available, so if you are interested do get in touch! You can offer as much or as little time as works for you.

We also have a volunteering scheme for anyone who is interested in supporting people with mental health problems.

If you are interested just contact us on involvement@swlstg.nhs.uk for more information

FInd out more about ourinvolvement plan. Find out more

Public consultation - inpatient mental health services in south west London

In 2014 a public consultation took place on the future locations of mental health inpatient facilities for the Kingston, Merton, Sutton, Richmond and Wandsworth areas. This included looking into a range of specialist mental-health inpatient services to serve a wider catchment area.

Feedback from the public consultation was used to make the clinical case for a change and the modernisation of mental health facilities in south west London. 

New facilities for future care

Our new facilities will transform mental health services in south west London and create two state-of-the-art centres of excellence for mental health services in Springfield University Hospital and Tolworth hospital.  Vulnerable people in the area will have access to some of the best services in the country.  

The two centres will be wholly paid for with a £160million investment from the sale of surplus land on the current Springfield University Hospital site.

Some of the proposed improvements include:

• Keeping adult deaf services on the Springfield site.

• A Clinical Commissioning Group CCG commitment to increasing overall mental health spending by £20million to £157.2million over the next five years.

• Working with patients and families via two travel steering groups to improve travel plans and access.

• Improving facilities for families and carers by providing visitor rooms on every ward and overnight accommodation at Tolworth for people visiting children.

• Adding in flexibility around bed numbers with contingency for a seventh adult mental health ward.

• Ensuring excellent education provision is in place prior to the opening of children's inpatients services in Tolworth.

• Working on plans to use part of Barnes Hospital for outpatient clinical services.