Patti Harvey Visits Newham Mental Health

Written by Clarissa Sørlie, Improvement Advisor 

On 1st May 2024, Newham Mental Health directorate welcomed Patti Harvey, executive director for Kaiser Permanente’s Care Management Institute, to their annual Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) visit. The focus of this year’s visit was community transformation, and 33 people met in Stratford to share the work they have done so far and create the next steps for their improvement plan. 

Image 1. Newham Mental Health IHI visit

Dominic Dougall (clinical director) and Fenno Outen (deputy borough director) opened the day with a high-level summary of improvement work in the Community Integrated Mental Health Service (CIMHS), which delivers non-urgent mental health care in the community. The room then heard two presentations. Fenno shared learning from a service user-led project on behalf of a service user and People Participation Lead who were unable to attend. This was followed by a presentation from Rachel Wilcocks and Michelle Heffernan about successful improvements to screening meetings, and band 5 development. Finally, participants had the opportunity to discuss their next steps related in three key areas – co-production, meaningful intervention, and screening – before hearing reflections from Patti.

Image 2. a small group discusses screening

Patti remarked on how far the conversations had matured since her visit to the directorate last year. She highlighted a theme of co-production emerged through the day and summarised the challenges with the following question: “how do you do co-production when time, resources and money are tight?”. She acknowledged how difficult it is to be pioneers and urged participants to persevere. Patti concluded the event by applauding the directorate and said, “you are teaching the rest of us how to work through these hard challenges and changing the way co-production is talked about around the world”.