Eliminating barriers to good care

In all aspects of our work and planning, we are striving to deliver more effective and efficient services that improve people's experiences and outcomes. In particular, we know we have further work to do to reduce delays and avoid duplication of effort and wasted resources.

We also need to create fair and equitable services for everyone and provide greater clarity about the many pathways of care and support that we offer. At present, we know that our services can be difficult to navigate and that there are still too many barriers and 'hand-offs' between services - which can create delays, mean poorer outcomes for people and deliver an unsatisfactory experience for them. Our goal is a clear understanding of the pathways of care that we offer and quick and seamless movement between and across services when it is required.

We are working hard to end multiple assessments for people by different services, when they serve no clinical purpose.

People with lived experience have told us that they find telling their story several times to different teams a waste of time - and sometimes traumatic. We will strive to ensure that our teams collaborate and share information with each other more effectively.

For people with a dual diagnosis of mental illness and substance misuse, we will develop better shared pathways of care that more effectively support them to access drug and alcohol treatment services and support them to remain in those treatment services.

Whole-life issues beyond health

We know that a wide range of factors can have an impact on a person's overall sense of wellbeing. Finding and sustaining employment, having strong social networks and a decent place to call home, for example, can be
pivotal in helping people to thrive and be happy. While our influence and control over these factors is limited, we are committed to working more closely with our partners to ensure more holistic support and opportunity is made available to people with mental health, learning disability and neurodiversity needs.

We aim to make further headway in using our influence to tackle the housing and employment challenges faced too often by the people in our care.

Specifically, we will also strive to address delayed discharges from hospital that are caused by accommodation issues. These delays prevent people from starting their recovery in the community and they contribute significantly and unnecessarily to prolonged hospital stays.

We will also aim to ensure that people in our care have access to appropriate professional advice and support with crucial and positive aspects of community living such as volunteering activities, education, employment and financial awareness. We will also ensure that our legal obligations to people being discharged from hospital, under Section 117  of the Mental Health Act, are fully met.