Mental Health

The Mental Health Partnership Board (MHPB) is made up of commissioners from health and social care, people with lived experience of mental health difficulties, and providers from statutory, third sector and public health services, and is the strategic board for mental health in Leeds. It is responsible for driving the mental health agenda across the city forward, as well as oversight for service development.

The Board is chaired by:

• Caroline Baria, Deputy Director of Integrated Commissioning at Adults and Health, Leeds City Council
• Helen Kemp, CEO of Leeds Mind

The third sector representatives are:

• Sinead Cregan, Director of Development and Innovation at Inspire North
• Tessa Denham, Director of Women’s Counselling and Therapy Service and PSI-Volition Trust
• Iain Anderson, CEO of Age UK
• Jenny Groves, Founder & CEO of Battle Scars
• Jay Silver, Clinical and Community Services Manager at Touchstone
• Karen Fenton, Volition Operations Manager
• Pip Goff, Director of Volition

The Leeds Health and Wellbeing Strategy provides a framework for improving health and for making Leeds the best city for health and wellbeing. In response, the Leeds Mental Health Strategy sets out how we will achieve this vison for mental health, so that ‘Leeds will be a Mentally Healthy City for everyone’.

View the Leeds Mental Health Strategy 2020-2025

Senior Responsible Officers (SRO’s) have been identified for each of the priority groups which are now forming and detailing project initiation documentation, workstreams and identifying key representatives and outcome/person centred measures for each. This diagram shows the delivery plan in summary and SRO’s aligned to each Priority as of Nov 2020 (subject to change).

An SRO’s group meets regularly to oversee progress and reports directly into the Mental Health Partnership Board for Strategic governance and steer.

As each workstream develops third sector representation will be key. If you are interested in finding out more about how to get involved and becoming a rep for the sector with support from Forum Central, please contact [email protected]

Background: Prior to Oct 2019 the draft document for the strategy was presented at a variety of stakeholder engagement events, including the MH info & Strategy session in Sept 2019.

The LYPFT Partnership Forums are currently on pause, due to the ongoing system pressures caused by the pandemic impacting upon developmental work. The NHS are still operating under a level 4 national incident, which dictates their actions and focus internally. Also, from the initial survey results, we are aware that members preferred an option to meet face to face rather than solely online, and at present this would not be possible for our NHS Operational Colleagues, as national guidance dictates that NHS staff should work from home where possible and infection prevention guidance still requires them to wear PPE.

With this in mind , once pressures from the pandemic are reduced, we will consider how we move forward with the partnership forum.

In the meantime we have the community and specialist system calls, which have representation from LYPFT – people are welcome to join these 6 weekly meetings if they want to. For more information, email [email protected]

General information on the Third Sector & LYPFT Partnership Forum

The Third Sector and Leeds and York Partnership Foundation Trust (LYPFT) Partnership Forum usually meets quarterly. Meetings are open to staff and volunteers from LYPFT services, and Leeds mental health third sector organisations.

Guest speakers or participants from other partner organisations (e.g. Leeds Community Healthcare Trust, Leeds City Council, Leeds CCG) may be invited to attend where appropriate.

Download the Partnership Forum Principles of Working Together

Previous meetings:

The most recent meeting was held on Thursday 1st July 2021 and the theme was Reset & Recovery. Download links to the slides from the meeting are available below:

• LYPFT Presentation (Alison Kenyon)
• Touchstone Presentation (Alison Lowe)
• Leeds Mind (Lucy Hancock)
• Leeds Survivor Led Crisis Service (Richard Barber)

September 2020 Meeting

• Notes from September 2020 meeting
• Slides from September 2020 meeting

To make best use of our strengths, maximise the opportunities and meet our challenges, the Mental Health Collaborative has been created, bringing partners together to ‘improve lives, support recovery and inclusion’, one of the three components in the Mental Health Strategy’s model for change.

With a focus on people and services, the Mental Health Collaborative provides the space and conditions for partners to plan, design and take action to ensure pathways and services are:

• continually improving
• accessible and responsive to people’s needs
• integrated in delivery wherever possible
• diverse in delivery but consistent in culture
• Meeting the needs of people in Leeds

Commissioners and providers of mental health services are joined by people who have used services, or are carers of those who have, or those who potentially could do (so anyone with an interest in improving mental health services in the city). The aim is for public involvement in the collaborative leading to co-production of solutions, with people shaping decisions and holding commissioners and providers to account. This is about building a new relationship with the public around the future of mental health in Leeds.

There is a mental health collaborative working group which meets frequently to discuss the formation of this important new group and identify work plan priorities and next steps. Sarah Wilson, Mental Health Development Worker for Volition currently represents the third sector on this, alongside Battle Scars’ Jenny Groves and Leeds Involving Peoples Joy McMillan who will focus on bringing in the voices of people.

The Collaborative is initially focusing on Priority 6 of the mental health strategy – relating to crisis and follow on from learning and actions identified at the crisis summit in Jan 2020 and insight gathered to create the Healthwatch and Battle Scars Crisis reports in 2019. There is third sector representation in these meetings from Leeds Survivor Led Crisis Service, Community Links/Inspire North, Touchstone & The Market Place.

There is also a Mental Health Collaborative third sector wider reference group Forum Central set up to involve third sector services who refer into crisis, to ensure their voices are heard. Currently, 30 third sector organisations feed into this group.

Sarah feeds the insights of this group into the core working group, you can see the presentations and compiled notes below:

• Third sector wider reference group Define presentation
• Third sector wider reference group Dreaming presentation
• Wider reference group full notes from breakout rooms
• Wider reference group full recommendations

The collaborative work around crisis has been split into five themes, upcoming meetings are included in bold:

Define – Discovery – Dreaming – Design – Do

If you wish to find out more please contact sarah.wilson@forumcentral.org.uk