By Ian Anderson ‐ chair of the Inspire Patients Group (Inspire is a group of surgeries including Hasland Surgery and Avenue House)
I am delighted that the Inspire Practice has agreed to work with the Inspire Patient Group (IPG) this year to try and improve the care that can be offered to patients in the area of mental health. The project begins on the 1st of June.
We aim to make the Inspire Practice one of the very best in mental health care. It will require a lot of work in many different areas but we are convinced that the members of our patient group [IPG] can undertake 90% of the work. The Practice have offered their full support and have high hopes of what can be achieved with this partnership approach.
It is well known that NHS mental health care is struggling with increasing demand and very limited resources. For example many young people have to wait a year for support. More are going into crisis situations and more are committing suicide. We want to make more help to be available especially through the voluntary agencies and help patients find this help.
We are extremely fortunate that one of our members Amy Harris has agreed to lead the project. She is a Chesterfield resident and is the Manager of a Chesterfield charity so she has all the contacts we will need in the voluntary sector. Amy has already developed an outline plan that has been enthusiastically accepted by the Practice.
I am genuinely excited by this project and feel it has the potential to make some major and very real changes in mental health care.
If you are an Inspire patient and haven’t already joined our 900 IPG email members then send us your email address to ppgroup.ih@gmail.com. We will keep you informed on this project and other developments and you can contribute your thoughts.
Let the work begin and let’s see the changes happening!
The plan of action
Once the 12 month project launches in June, we will be looking for members within the current Inspire patient group with a particular interest and passion in mental health to form a sub group. This group will meet on a monthly basis and make sure that all the aims we set out for the next year are achieved. We will also be inviting a wider group to be involved in less active roles to make sure that no one is excluded.
The group will set out a timetable for key things we want to achieve, but a major part of this will be engaging with all patients to ensure everyone has a voice. We don’t want to make any assumptions as to what good mental health care and support looks like, as we know that this will be different for all.
We already have many ideas of improvements we can make, with a real emphasis on making sure access to mental health support is made as easy as possible. One example of this will be an on site counsellor for Inspire patients, launching in early June. This will provide free and quick access to talking therapy for anxiety and depression.
A monthly newsletter will be circulated to update all patients on the work being done on this project and we really hope that positive changes will be noticed very quickly.
We are very lucky to have a surgery willing to make such a strong commitment to mental health and demonstrate how much they value the importance of making that first contact asking for help as good as possible.
At the end of this 12 month project, we hope to make asking for help easier, provide many resources for self help and support through the voluntary sector and show our patients that mental and physical health are equally important and essential to wellbeing.