Our Clinical Strategy 2025-28
Our commitment to people using our services, their families and carers; the people we employ; the communities we serve and our partner organisations.
(An Easy Read version of the Clinical Strategy is also available.)
Foreword
Within Devon and across the wider NHS, our organisation supports a diverse range of people, and some of the most vulnerable and disadvantaged people in society.
Commitments and priorities
Our clinical strategy sets out our commitments to those people and their families and carers; the people we employ; the communities we serve and our partner organisations. It also sets out our priorities and the principles which underpin our approach to delivering care and support. It is a key driver in our desire to commission and deliver safe, high-quality services for people with mental health, learning disability and neurodiversity needs.
Above all else, we hope that people will find our services more inclusive, simpler to access and more tailored to their personal needs over the next three years.
Together approach
Our Together approach runs through everything that we do and we have worked extensively with a wide range of people in producing this strategy - particularly people with lived experience and our staff. The process of engagement does not stop with the production of this strategy, it is an ongoing conversation and sharing of expertise that aims to deliver continuous improvement wherever we can.
A key component of delivering safe, high quality care is a well-motivated clinical workforce that has access to education, training and professional development - and this is embedded into our culture and all of our plans.
We have known for many years that mental health and wellbeing are inextricably linked to other key issues in people's lives. Finding and sustaining good quality employment, having a decent place to call home, being protected from abuse, having a good education and meaningful relationships, for example, are critical factors in people's lives - and key factors in recovery and sustaining health and wellbeing. Whilst we do not directly control many of these factors, we are committed to working closely with our partners to ensure more holistic support and opportunity is available to people with mental health, learning disability and neurodiversity needs.
More broadly, it is important that our organisation takes a leadership role in supporting our system partners, and other sectors, to consider how they can contribute positively to meeting the needs of people with mental health, learning disability and neurodiversity needs in all aspects of their work. A joined-up approach across all of our organisations has the potential to dramatically improve life outcomes and reduce health inequalities for many people in Devon.
Improving outcomes
In our everyday lives, technology is playing an increasingly important role and our clinical strategy makes it clear that we are actively exploring how we can embrace digital solutions to improve outcomes for people and to make the best possible use of our limited resources. We are already doing this successfully in a number of areas but we fully recognise the value of face-to-face contact with the people we support, and their families and carers.
Producing this strategy has told us that we need to be better at preventing ill health and maximising mental wellbeing, better at being accessible to people who are experiencing serious mental illness and better at personalising the work we do with people so that their recovery is meaningful to them.
We also need to do more to support our partners to consider the impact of their work on people with mental health, learning disability and neurodiversity needs and be more efficient in delivering some aspects of our care. Above all else, we hope that people will find our services more inclusive, simpler to access and more tailored to their personal needs over the next three years.
We want everyone to have a good care experience and to achieve positive outcomes. We believe that this clinical strategy plays an important part in making these ambitions a reality.
- Phill Mantay, Chief Executive Officer
- Hazel Powell, Chief Nurse and Allied Professions Lead
- Dr Fintan Larkin, Chief Medical Officer
About Devon
- Devon has a population of about 1.3million people across 2,500 square miles - it is the third-largest county in the country
- The combination of rural, coastal and urban communities, with significant variation in levels of deprivation, creates a complex and diverse set of health and care needs
- The excess death rate for people under 75 is worse than the national average for people with a serious mental illness
- People with mental health needs, a learning disability and/or autism are less likely to get employment and generally a far lower life expectancy than the UK average
- The suicide rate for both men and women is worse than the national average and some areas have rates that are among the highest in the country
- There are more than 13,000 patients on GP registers with a diagnosis of mental health need, which is higher than the national average
- It is estimated that 16% of people aged 16 and over have a common mental disorder.
Introduction
Our refreshed clinical strategy sets out how we will deliver services to support the needs of the people in our care over the next few years. In creating the strategy, we have listened to people with lived experience, our staff and our partners.
Since our last clinical strategy was published, many things have changed. These have been driven nationally, regionally and locally. They have also come about as a result of a significant increase in the presentation of needs related to mental health, learning disability and neurodiversity, changes in demand for our services and developments in wider society - for example the continued growth in our use of digital platforms and technologies in almost every aspect of our lives.
We have built on what we already know and taken into account the national direction of travel as well as local needs and the priorities and plans of Devon and the wider south west.
Drivers of change
Drivers of change
- The covid pandemic had a number of unforeseeable impacts on people's mental health and wellbeing, particularly among children and younger people
- We have seen additional investment and service improvement in a number of areas including the implementation of the community mental health framework (CMHF) and associated changes to our community-based offer, and the development of new approaches in fields such as eating disorders, rehabilitation and recovery and support for people with complex emotional needs
- We have embarked upon an important piece of clinical and cultural improvement work with our mental health, learning disability and autism inpatient transformation and culture of care programme, which was launched in 2024
- We are placing an increasingly sharp focus on our work with colleagues in primary care and the voluntary, charity, and social enterprise (VCSE) sector, supporting communities to develop locally-owned resources and working with them in equal partnership to meet a wide range of needs
- The introduction of the patient safety incident response framework (PSIRF), the personalised care framework (PCF) and the patient and carer race equality framework (PCREF) is shaping our approach to improving clinical services based on learning from incidents and encouraging us to place even more attention on how we tailor care to people's individual needs
- We are actively embracing new technologies and exploring digital solutions and opportunities that may improve health outcomes and experiences for people and, very importantly, reduce the administrative burden to allow our staff to spend more time with the people they support
- The landscape of commissioning and providing services continues to change and evolve, for example with the emergence of integrated care systems and provider collaboratives.
Our approach - working together
In developing and implementing this strategy, we are guided by our Together approach.
This empowers staff and people who use our services, and their families and carers, to make the most of their lived experience and expertise to influence meaningful change.
We recognise that people who use and work in our services have the insights and skills to transform how care is designed and delivered.
Our commitment is to start from what matters most to them.
As a result, we connect directly with voices from many diverse backgrounds in striving to address health inequalities and deliver better care and support.
Consultation and engagement
We have engaged with a wide range of staff, stakeholders and partners in coproducing this strategy.
We have used a blended approach, including consultation and meaningful engagement, to help inform our work. We coordinated and spoke with special interest groups and networks of service users and staff to ensure that we have considered a wide range of needs. This process was further informed through data analysis from our services and from analysis of our local population needs to ensure that our strategy focuses, as far as possible, on the areas of greatest need.
Key principles
The implementation of our strategy will be guided by three key principles, which will help us deliver the best possible outcomes for people:
- Collaboration and coproduction
- Continual learning through insight and feedback
- Improving people's experience as well as safety and effectiveness.
We continue to build equal and reciprocal partnerships with people with lived experience, families, carers and staff. We will also draw on the knowledge and experience of wider partners, including the voluntary, community and social enterprise (VCSE) sector, local authorities and Healthwatch - alongside communities. Our multi-disciplinary teams (MDTs) are a great example of this collaborative approach to meeting people's needs.
Together we are striving to create services that offer personalised care, tailored to the needs of each individual. Our Together Strategy is being refreshed and will be published in 2025. In line with the national 'Working in Partnership with People and Communities' guidance, we will continue to build and nurture a collaborative environment where everyone's voice is heard and valued.
Our values
Our strategy is also shaped by our values, which run through every aspect of our work.
They are the touchstone for everything that we do:
- Working together for patients
- Commitment to quality of care
- Compassion
- Improving lives
- Respect and dignity
- Everyone counts
