Your views on mental health services in NW London

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We are developing our overall plan for adult mental health services in North West London. We would very much welcome views of the public on our draft strategy.

 This draft strategy is very much a work in progress that has been developed through a series of discussions and public events across our eight boroughs. The document outlines a summary of the needs of our local population, what we've heard from our residents and service users on their own experiences of using services, and an understanding of current mental health services for adults. The draft also sets out four emerging themes and includes suggestions for future focus.

If you would like to get involved and input to our plan, two further events have been planned and these are taking place on:

You can also email nhsnwl.communications.nwl@nhs.net with any comments or queries.

We expect to publish a final version of the strategy early in 2024.

How are we developing the strategy

With an initial focus on adult mental health services, NHS North West London, local authorities, experts by experience, Voluntary Community Sector, and partners responsible for the delivery and planning of health and social care services are working together, in collaboration, to outline our approach to mental health care and services.

To develop the strategy, this working group is also reviewing progress against the NW London Like Minded Case for Change and NW London’s response to the NHS Long Term Plan.

We have already been hearing from local residents, health and care staff, Healthwatch and the voluntary and community sectors. In partnership with our local authorities and provider trusts, we have an extensive outreach programme that helps us to understand what matters the most to our residents and communities. Reports on the messages you are giving to us (what we call community insight reports) are published regularly on our website.

Local residents have been able to share their views and experiences to help inform the strategy through participation in face to face ’drop in’ events, one for each of our eight Boroughs, two North West London wide virtual events, via direct submission, and where requested through sessions for specific community organisations.  Thank you very much to everyone who participated in the responses, the material has been shared with the staff working on the strategy and is available here. If you would like to add further comments please email nhsnwl.communications.nwl@nhs.net.

All the public feedback received is being used by our mental health strategy working group, to help shape our ambitions for improving mental health services and addressing our biggest treatment gaps, with a particular focus on innovation (e.g. digital).

A draft strategy that will refresh and pull into one place all existing approaches to adult mental health will be released in late November 2023 and a further period of public engagement will then commence.

What we wanted to understand from the engagement was:

1. What services are working well?
2. What treatments and/or services patients, residents and staff feel they need that are not readily available? 
3. What progress has been made to close known inequalities in access to adult mental health services?
4. What are the service and treatment priorities in each of the eight NW London boroughs?

Drop-in sessions

The following meetings were free to attend and no booking was required.

The presentation used for the September and Octovber 2023 engagement can be found here.

If you have further comments on the review of engagement themes please email nhsnwl.communications.nwl@nhs.net with the heading Mental Health Strategy.