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

Overheard during this week’s webinar:

“We have written a letter to staff around the Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities report. The rational is to reflect the strong feeling and distress of BME staff and allies and the risk of this commission being used by some individuals to deny institutionalised racism which could lead to bullying and harassment. There are parts of the report I would like to see implemented – such as further funding for race equality.”

“All social determinants are piled up against people with long term mental health problems and it can be difficult to see what trusts can directly do to help. But campaigning to reduce the strain around poverty and housing and employment can make a difference. This connects the issues of health inequalities to the specific outcomes of people with serious mental illness, and potentially this is something which all can do at the ICS level as part of their strategy development.”

“Within our ICS and around the ICP tables, there is a lot of support from the local authority around the social determinants of health, but this is diverging at the ICP level and there is a risk of losing the cross regional and geographic approach to this to make a difference and to make it efficient.”

[In a discussion about provider collaboratives] “Where there is a rush to structure it is easy to lose the principle of why the collaborative is being set up in the first place. The mental health collaborative can become difficult to justify [on] structure and geography, and can appear to look like it is to make things easier for providers when in fact it was set up to improve patient pathways and patient safety. Anything that helps develop and articulate the principles for collaboratives is welcome – the fear is that they will become about place and system rather than patient need.”

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