For many years it has been recognised that mental health services require more investment; as a result, NHS England (NHSE) introduced a national community mental health framework through the Long-Term Plan in 2019. The framework pledges to deliver £2.3 billion of extra funding to mental health services in England by 2023/24.

At NELFT, we have successfully bid for our share of the NHSE’s investment, and over the next three years are planning to improve our community mental health services across northeast London to meet the needs of our service users and their carers/family. Our vision is to establish place-based care which is person-centred, and we will do this through establishing Mental Health & Wellness Teams (MHW Teams) which will bring together a range of services and roles that work as one team wrapped around our service users, to deliver tailored, individualised care and support.

We will increase our capacity by recruiting additional staff to provide the right care at the right time in the right place across our four boroughs of Waltham Forest, Barking & Dagenham, Redbridge and Havering.

Across the NELFT catchment area, we are implementing a place-based approach through the Mental Health & Wellness Teams (MH&WT) that enables us to: 

• Better understand and respond to local demographics
• Address health inequalities and the social determinants of mental ill health at an earlier stage
• Prevent and delay the need for crisis care or risk support
• Engage in meaningful co-production and co-design with our service users and carers.

We will improve the quality of patient care by developing multi-agency teams, working with a shared vision to introduce the new model of care which is trauma informed and person-centred. We aim to increase access to psychological therapies, social support, community connections and ensuring the wellbeing of staff. 

MH&WTs  will start to embed the changes needed to better support you, your family/ carers, by linking in with the external partners in primary care, local charities, and social services. We hope the new pathways and working relationships will:

• Help you to receive your treatment faster when required, preventing relapse
• Ensure care is more personalised as the service is tailored to your need
• Make the process easier to get help with no need for you to repeat your story

For our workforce, new roles are being created to help us achieve this Trust wide transformation programme, alongside a programme of enhanced training for our clinical teams.