10 February - Mental Health Network webinar - governance during the COVID-19 pandemic

This week’s session was joined by Catherine Roache, CEO of Place2Be, for a discussion about Children’s Mental Health Week, the importance of prevention and early intervention and to share a vision for a future model of care and support for young people.

Overheard during the discussion:

“Our ICS is coming together around children’s mental health needs. A critical challenge we face is making it clear that the solution can be outside CAMHS. We are working in a new partnership with third sector organisations to deliver a pathway which focuses on early intervention to avoid the need for the high intensity support in CAMHs. A focus on an alliance of services in schools, families and communities to support children’s mental health will be important.”

“There’s a need for language to move from treatment to a public health model. We have had success around personality disorders and moving to a public health approach. In the Samaritans, they were trying to prevent suicide, which is rare and serious, but required them to go back and consider the precise actions which would help ultimately prevent suicide, such as equipping people to notice someone in distress and ask if they need help.”

“The system currently feels quite broken, especially in terms of how and when children and young people can access NHS treatment. The principles of early intervention and avoiding pathologizing of young people’s needs is important, but doesn’t feel like a reality currently.”

“Schools face the challenge of shoehorning every child into the same structure, which is impossible with the range of needs children and young people have. Equipping teachers with the right mindset will be important to support children with the basics of the everyday school set up and lifestyle.”

During a discussion about engaging and working with the CQC:

“Boards can be nervous about the well-led review they are going to take part in. The grading is given on a whole range of categories, and there can be an over-emphasis on the well-led part of the review. Storytelling is critical, and this being consistent across an organisation is important.”

“The CQC’s recent focus on equity has been interesting but potentially concerning, as they are mentioning sending enforcement notice to all providers as a way to be equitable, but this feels unduly harsh – different measures should be used as part of a wider balanced approach and potentially a negative mindset in an increasingly complex system.”

“Inadequate trusts are those with problems around staffing, patient outcomes or a difficult individual patient story in the media. For outstanding trusts they will likely be doing positive innovation work and communicating this well and have positive stories shared by staff and patients involved in the trust. There are also positive, common message between the chief executive and board members, with examples of embedded partnership working and innovation.”

These meetings are by invitation only. For further details, visit our events page.

If you have any comments, questions or suggestions about these webinars, please contact: events@good-governance.org.uk