Alliance celebrates progress and sets future priorities at annual event
The East Midlands Alliance recently hosted its annual event, bringing together senior leaders from across the region to celebrate achievements, share insights and to think about the future of joint working to improve mental health, learning disability and autism services in the region.
Attended by chief executives, chairs, non-executive directors, senior clinicians and colleagues from the Alliance's provider collaboratives and communities of practice, the event took place at St Andrew's Healthcare's Northampton headquarters in October.
Gareth Harry, National Delivery Director for Mental Health, Learning Disability and Autism, NHS England opened the event with a presentation on national priorities, highlighting the focus on the digital agenda to enhance service delivery. This helped to underpin the event and continuing importance of collaboration and sharing learnings to drive improvements in care.
An insightful update on the Patient Safety Programme was next presented by Hannah Jackson-Cox, Senior Improvement Lead from Health Innovation East Midlands (HIEM), alongside Lived Experience Advisors Jenny Allen-Lynn and Jude Allen-Lynn. They introduced the new 'Hear Us/ I am Heard' tool, which enables purposeful post-incident debriefs and aims to reduce incidences of restrictive practices. They also shared details of a data-driven approach to reducing incidences of self-harm, emphasising co-production with patients to generate and implement change ideas.
Ben Troke from Weightmans LLP provided an overview of upcoming changes to the legal landscape framework, including the key aspects of the Mental Health Act reform 2025 and how this impacts services and patient care. The EMA has launched a Mental Health Act Workshops programme, which has been designed to complement the Mental Health Act training. This training is available to all colleagues working in mental health across the region to ensure best practice and a unified approach.
A highlight of the event was a presentation from the East Midlands CAMHS collaborative and the positive steps the team are making in providing care closer to home. Since the launch of the collaborative, the service has reduced inpatient admissions by 65% and introduced a number of new initiatives to improve experiences and outcomes for young people and their families, work which has seen it shortlisted for Provider Collaboration of the Year at the prestigious annual HSJ Awards.
The event concluded with an open discussion led by chief executives, focusing on future priorities for the Alliance and further opportunities to work together and use the collective voices of providers to drive meaningful change.
Angela Hillery, Chief Executive of Leicestershire Partnership and Northamptonshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust, said:
"It's been a fantastic event celebrating the work we do together. What's really come out of this year is that people have shared more, they've learnt more and there's a real willingness to improve together.
"Looking ahead, we have a tremendous opportunity to innovate in population health and integrated care. I'm truly hopeful for what we can achieve in the next 12 months. Thank-you to everyone for their continued hard work."
You can watch highlights from the event here: