Use our expertise to lead and partner

Aim 2: Use our experise to lead and partner

Provide the highest quality care to achieve the best outcomes for service users and their loved ones.

We have significant organisational expertise in specialist mental health, learning disability and substance misuse services. We recognise that by working closely and collaboratively with our partners in Kent and Medway, we can bring our expertise to bear across the system and take a lead to support Integrated Care Providers and Primary Care Networks as they plan to best meet the needs of their local populations.

To achieve this, we will focus on the delivery of three objectives:

1. Build active partnerships with Kent and Medway health and care organisations
2. Partner beyond Kent and Medway, where it benefits our population for example forming a regional provider collaborative to improve access to specialist services locally. Participating in, and learning from, national research and innovation networks.
   
3. Build an ethos of innovation within our trust to support the development of primary and community care models for mental health, learning disabilities and substance misuse; helping to move care and services out of hospital and closer to people’s homes where appropriate.

Objective 1

Build active partnerships with Kent and Medway health and care organisations

The shared ambition for greater joined-up, system working in health and care means we will partner more closely with organisations across Kent and Medway to achieve our aims. We need to look outwards beyond the traditional parameters of KMPT, work together and support each other to deliver integrated care and improve the health outcomes of the people we serve. We are already represented on a number of system leadership boards, including the four Integrated Care Provider boards in Kent and Medway, and look forward to contributing to their development over the next four years.

We have shared goals and will work together to deliver their priorities, including making improvements in
emergency crisis care, frailty and dementia.

Building partnerships within primary care

We are committed to building strong relationships and new ways of working with our GP partners, including through the primary care networks. It is important that we actively promote the KMPT service offer to primary care networks so that they understand what is available for their patients and how they can most effectively access it. In turn, we will take steps to better understand the pressures of primary care and work together to address our collective and individual challenges.

We know that too often GPs are frustrated when referrals are rejected because they do not meet specific referral criteria, and this can negatively impact care and the experience of care for service users and their families. We want to address this and will share our expertise and knowledge by offering training to GPs that will increase their confidence and transfer skills. We also need to work with our primary care, community health, local authority and VSCE colleagues to identify what alternative services and support are available if a patient doesn’t meet specific referral criteria for secondary care services.

We’re already working to help address these issues in partnership with primary care colleagues through several initiatives and will continue to do so over the next three years.

For example, we are working to develop an accreditation scheme for GPs to help them become mental health experts within primary care. With a presence within each ICP area, we envisage that a cohort of three accredited GPs would lead the improvement of care quality, increasing knowledge and competencies in mental health provision in the wider primary care worforce.

Implementing the Community Mental Health Framework

People want to access the care, advice and support they need no matter where they first try to seek it, whether that is from 111, their GP, from a community service, through online self-referral, self-help or another route. In other words, there should be a ‘no wrong door’ approach to accessing advice, care and treatment when it is needed.

This programme will see us collaborate to provide single assessment and treatment planning while assuring resource allocation is effective in delivering seamless care, treatment and mental health support.

We want to achieve radical change in the design of community mental health care by moving away from siloed, difficult to access services to joined-up care and establishing a revitalised purpose and identity for traditional community mental health services serving those most in need with serious mental illnesses.

The programme will link to the four Integrated Care Partnerships across Kent and Medway with the aim of responding to population health priorities and ensuring that national standards are met and embedded at a system level. This is an exciting opportunity for the whole system to deliver the best possible care to some of the most vulnerable people in our communities.

Partnership working across the wider health and care system

We already have strong relationships with local authority and third sector partners and will continue to build on these. We know that a person’s physical and mental health are contingent upon a healthy living environment and positive relationships.

KMPT already plays an integral role within the wider Kent and Medway criminal justice system, working closely with colleagues in Kent Police and providing, for example, innovative and progressive specialist services within police custody suites and the courts for people of all ages. We have a full programme of work underway in this area and are developing joint measurable objectives around initiatives and support for people with serious mental illness – making our clinical expertise easily available to colleagues working
within the police and providing specialist input into police training.

With education partners, those in social care and those providing key services in the community we can support our population to live their best lives. Moving into the future it will be critical that we establish a strong partnership with the new Kent and Medway Medical School.

Case study - Psychological support for NHS/health and care staff

In November 2020, the KMPT psychological therapies bid for Kent and Medway was approved providing £343,000 non recurrent funding to the system for staff health. This is an outstanding example of how we are using our capacity and expertise innovatively and collaboratively to support health and care staff working across the system.

Each of Kent and Medway’s seven acute hospital sites will be provided with two people (KMPT psychologist and an ‘Improving access to psychological therapies’ (IAPT) clinician) who will work flexibly to support the mental health and wellbeing of NHS health and care staff.

Whilst the model is currently to deliver that support through Kent and Medway’s acute hospital sites, this may be reviewed and adjusted at a later date.

We are developing initiatives that build environments in which staff can thrive, with a primary focus on managing the emotional and psychological impact of their roles and increasing wellbeing. We have already started to have discussions with other NHS organisations across Kent and Medway about how we could share our specialist expertise in psychological support and staff health and wellbeing to support NHS staff across the system. We have shared our expertise in this area during the COVID-19 response as described earlier in this strategy document. This is one example of an area where we could develop effective partnerships and transfer our expertise to support better outcomes for staff and service users across Kent and Medway, and beyond.

Objective 2

Partnering beyond Kent and Medway, where it benefits our population

As we grow our specialist expertise there may also be opportunities to work beyond Kent and Medway, more widely with other health and care systems. For example, to deliver specialised services as part of the NHS-led ‘Provider Collaboratives’. Under this programme providers are responsible for managing the budget and patient pathway for specialised mental health care for people who need it in their local area.

Currently Provider Collaboratives deliver:

• Adult low and medium secure services
  
• Eating disorder services
  
• Veterans’ mental health services
  
• Neurodiversity service development
  
• Children and young people’s mental health services

Case study – Veterans’ mental health collaborative

KMPT has joined with Solent and other partners to deliver the NHS Long Term Plan’s commitment to commission the Veteran’s Mental Health High Intensity Service (HIS).

Informed by veterans and their families, as well as the NHS England and NHS Improvement Armed Forces Patient and Public Voice Group, the High Intensity Service will provide care and treatment for veterans who are struggling with their mental health and wellbeing, are in a mental health crisis and/or need urgent and emergency care and treatment.

We will work with Solent following their successful bid for the south east region with the aim of supporting our veterans with the right care at the right time. This includes support from the Veterans’ Mental Health Transition, Intervention and Liaison Service (TILS) and the Veteran’s Mental Health Complex Treatment Service (CTS) – (both in Sussex Partnership NHS Foundation Trust), as well as other mainstream mental health services.

Pathfinder services will run until 2022, learning and insights from this work will help to inform the development of improvements to integrated service models.

Objective 3

Build an ethos of innovation to support the development of primary and community care models for mental health, learning disabilities and substance misuse

Our ambition is to develop and support a Kent and Medway innovation network which aligns with KMPT’s improvement programmes as an organisation and those of our wider health and care system. We will do this through focused engagement and close working with the Kent, Surrey and Sussex Academic Health Science Network.

KMPT’s leadership of the system-wide Mental Health Learning Disability and Autism Improvement Board in Kent and Medway is the starting point for increased cross-sector innovation that will bring about clinically evidenced benefits for services users, their carers and loved ones.

Objective 4

Work with system partners to understand the changing and diverse needs of our populations and work together to meet these needs and improve health and wellbeing

The Mental Health Learning Disability and Autism Provider Collective provides a multisector forum for partnership working to improve the mental health and mental wellbeing outcomes of the population of Kent & Medway. It influences the development of the vision, outcomes and scope of the Kent and Medway Mental Health and Learning Disability and Autism strategies and supports alignment with the NHS Long Term Plan.

The Collective working together enables the identification of key issues and the opportunity for collaborative solutions. As a provider partner in each of the four local ICPs across the system, KMPT is well
placed to actively contribute to population health management development programmes.

We will work together with partners to build capacity and capability to transform service delivery around key population groups. We will aim to proactively support and sustain integrated care delivery to improve the physical and mental health of our communities.