On Thursday 9 May 2019 over 100 partners came from across north east London to take part in our first Mental Health Summit at Toynbee Hall in Aldgate. The summit brought staff and volunteers from the NHS, local authorities and voluntary and community organisations to discuss how they could work together to continue to transform mental health services in our area.
The summit was part of the process of developing a programme of work in the context of the NHS’ Long Term Plan. Exhibition stands were also there to showcase some of our excellent local services and initiatives working to improve mental health outcomes for local people.
The discussion focussed on:
- recognising local success and progress over the last five years
- understanding the challenges and opportunities with service users and clinicians
- learning from innovation and best practice from outside north east London
- working together towards a future plan that delivers improved mental health for people in north east London
There was plenty of opportunity to feed in ideas and a lot of enthusiastic discussion with colleagues about experiences of using or working in mental health services. Participants also heard from a Citizens Panel – people who had come into contact with mental health services who gave honest feedback about what it felt like, what went well and what could be improved. Their views became pivotal to the discussion and informed the subjects that groups of participants discussed in small groups. The Citizens Panel was created for the event and the members were thanked for their contribution and for sharing their valuable insights and stories.
Following the event, further work is now underway to reconvene the citizens panel and other partners to consider how we will develop our programme together based on the key priority themes agreed at the summit. These priorities are captured below:
