Work underway to improve mental health support in North Yorkshire
It's after a new report was published last week
Work is underway across North Yorkshire to improve services to support people going through a mental health crisis.
A week ago, we told you about a new report which found many who are struggling often feel they are "passed between services."
David Kerr, Transformation Programme Lead with the North Yorkshire & York Mental Health Alliance, said: “We know that there are pressures on mental health services and that this is affecting the support people are receiving and the experiences people are having. To be sustainable and ensure people get the best possible care and support that is right for them, we must adapt and transform the way we work.
“The Community Mental Health Transformation Programme aims to do just this; it’s about listening to and working with local people and partners to understand the needs of local people and what really matters to them.
"The development of new mental health hubs in the community, which are spaces where all of the services, including housing, social care, peer support, primary care as in GP representation and secondary care, specialist services, are all in one space, so there will be spaces where people will be able to just present with need.
"We've introduced new roles into primary care so people will now be able to see what we call a first contact mental health practitioner, which is a specialist mental health nurse, who will sit in GP practices and people if they need to see someone around mental health, they can see them instead of their GP.
"They'll be assessed, helped, given some brief interventions and hopefully don't need to go further than that. We will have sixty odd of those new roles over the next year, so we're mid recruitment but there are around half of those in place already.
"The crisis lines are being continuingly evaluated and developed. We're working with a number of other organisations to provide additional support but also, we're nationally moving towards being part of the 111 telephone call system.
"People will be able to access mental health services through 111 directly in the very near future but in the meantime, we've increased resources, access and more calls are now being answered within a reasonable time which is good."