Issue - meetings

·         Report by the Head of Strategic Commissioning for Mental Health, ESCC and the Service Director for East Sussex, Sussex Partnership NHS Foundation Trust

27.1     The Board considered a report by the Head of Strategic Commissioning for Mental Health, ESCC, and the Service Director for East Sussex, Sussex Partnership NHS Foundation Trust, providing an update against the East Sussex Crisis Care Concordat Action Plan.

27.2     The Board welcomed the progress that had been made against the Crisis Care Concordat Action Plan to date.

27.3     The key points of the discussion, raised in response to questions from the Board, included:

·         The Head of Strategic Commissioning for Mental Health shared the Board’s concern that it had not been possible to agree a Business Case for developing specialist services for people with personality disorders but reassured the Board that work would continue to find a solution. A solution would likely involve the use of pump priming funding and the use of the parity esteem principle (the national recognition that mental health must be given equal priority to physical health).

·         It is currently difficult for people to access mental health services within primary care as a whole – some GP surgeries are well equipped to deal with complex mental health difficulties but other practices find it less easy to do so. Whilst GP surgeries are keen to improve their ability to treat patients with mental health issues, there is a significant national shortage of GPs that makes it difficult to recruit sufficient qualified staff to provide the additional required level of care. The East Sussex Better Together (ESBT) programme is investigating ways to upskill and incentivise primary care to do more for the routine management of people with long-term, stable mental health problems.

·         Sussex Partnership NHS Foundation Trust (SPFT) provides information to South East Coast Ambulance NHS Foundation Trust’s (SECAmb) Intelligence Based Information System (IBIS) on certain mental health patients along with advice on how they should be treated – often this is to send the patient straight to SPFT and avoid A&E. IBIS is available to ambulance technicians and paramedics on board their ambulance.

27.4     The Board RESOLVED to note the report and its appendix.