Tayside Mental Health Alliance

The vision for the Tayside Mental Health Alliance is that the people of Tayside will receive the best possible mental health care and treatment.

This includes positive wellbeing and a good quality of life to help prevent mental health problems occurring, and that those with mental ill health will get the respect, support, treatment and care they require to recover without fear of discrimination or stigma.

NHS Tayside and the IJBs are committed to building a mental health and social care system that aims to:
• Strive for equitable health outcomes
• Support and improve the mental health and wellbeing of people to maximise their independence and health by providing the right support at the right time
• Embed multi-disciplinary team working at the heart of ‘seamless’ care pathways and provision of support
• Ensure services are high quality, safe, person centred, affordable and sustainable
• Ensure services are planned and delivered with people who have lived experience
• Focus on people, their families and communities keeping them at the centre of everything we do

The Tayside Mental Health Alliance has representation from the following:
NHS Tayside

• Child and Adolescent Mental Health
• Public Health
• Primary Care
• Staff Side

Angus Health & Social Care Partnership
Dundee Health & Social Care Partnership
Perth & Kinross Health & Social Care Partnership
Local Authority Chief Social Work Officers
Independent Advocacy
Dundee Voluntary Action

The initial priorities of the Tayside Mental Health Alliance are:

• Workforce 
• Community Mental Health and Crisis Care & Home Treatment
• Learning Disability
• Rehabilitation Pathway
• Emotionally Unstable Personality Disorder (EUPD) Pathway

For each of these areas, a design group has been set up to develop and implement new models. The design groups will have a number of stakeholders, importantly service users and carers, and ensure there is opportunity to design and develop services.

These groups will report any decisions about strategy, design and resources to the relevant Board for review and approval.

Plans are being developed to increase delivery of care in a community setting, underpinned by accessible, safe and effective inpatient services where these are needed. This work has progressed to the point that detailed consultation of the outline options is now needed with all parts of the multidisciplinary team and with groups representing service users and those with a lived care experience.

Progress on this workstream was reported to the most recent meeting of the Tayside Mental Health Alliance and is now ready for detailed consultation with staff and service users. The work seeks to implement best practice as advised in national guidelines and a number of the key recommendations are already being applied in practice.

This workgroup had an initial meeting with a range of stakeholders in December 2019. It looks to design a pathway that minimises use of crisis assessment and reaffirms the commitment to provide intensive support at home or in a community setting to minimise need for inpatient care unless the individual patient circumstances require this.

The working group met in December 2019 and is building on work that had been done within the Learning Disability management group. In addition to the developments outlined above which seek to integrate and improve services and to plan across the whole system to enhance pathways and deliver improved outcomes.

This group is being established in early 2020.