15 April 2021 – Mental Health Network – governance during the COVID-19 pandemic webinar

Overheard during this week’s webinar:

“With the notion of ‘place’ coming to the fore for the NHS, what can NHS organisations do as anchor systems develop? The impact from the recession will be felt by trusts and, with health and the economy aligned, the NHS should consider what it is asking of its place partners.”

“We are trying to get health at the heart of investment. There might be a layer of governance needed for this beyond the ICS considering whether boundary changes around county boundaries might tie into a decision-making area. If we’re talking about sitting down with powerful decision-makers about employment and so on, we might want to align.”

“I met with the chief executive of a local enterprise partnership that is focused on a recovery plan aiming to get back to previous employment levels in 2024 as people are going to be further away from labour market than before and our services bring people back into employment. It’s important that, if we want to make sure integrating care is implanted, and mental health isn’t lost in process, then these are the relationships and understandings we need to develop.”

“At the height of the pandemic, we set up a summit looking at how communities can respond to the mental health impact of pandemic. They held three summit events, created a taskforce, commissioned an organisation to run South London Listens. […] There were 5,700 contributions through campaign, 600 through survey. From learning, we’ve established key priority areas, including young people and parental mental health. The next stage is to shape actions to take across south London. The focus is about acting as a convener and collaborating with local authorities, the third sector, and community and faith groups to get ideas we wouldn’t generate ourselves.”

“The NHS and local authorities are very different, with different capacities to collaborate. I can see various problems in terms of managing relationships. Those problems are visible at the top – between health and housing in government. They’d have to come together for this to work.”

These meetings are by invitation only. For further details, visit our website https://www.good-governance.org.uk/events/.

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