{"id":133981,"date":"2025-05-26T19:11:08","date_gmt":"2025-05-26T19:11:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/133981\/"},"modified":"2025-05-26T19:11:08","modified_gmt":"2025-05-26T19:11:08","slug":"we-are-really-stuck-north-london-mental-health-trust-grilled-on-lack-of-supported-housing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/133981\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cWe are really stuck\u201d: North London mental health trust grilled on lack of supported housing"},"content":{"rendered":"

Councillors have told a North London mental health trust to better demonstrate how it is improving amid concerns around the discharge of vulnerable people.<\/p>\n

A joint health overview and scrutiny committee, made up of councillors from Enfield, Barnet, Haringey, Camden and Islington councils, met on Thursday (22nd) to discuss a new report from North London NHS Foundation Trust (NLFT).<\/p>\n

The trust was launched in November following a merger between Barnet, Enfield and Haringey (BEH) and Camden and Islington mental health trusts.<\/p>\n

Committee chair Pippa Connor said councillors had raised concerns around a lack of supported housing for discharged mental health patients from the two previously separate trusts.<\/p>\n

However, she said the newly-merged trust\u2019s\u00a02024\/25 report<\/a>\u00a0didn\u2019t outline any \u201cspecific personal collaboration with housing authorities to increase supported housing availability\u201d.<\/p>\n

The trust\u2019s chief medical officer, Vincent Kirchner, said supported housing did \u201ccontinue to be a problem\u201d and a \u201cvery very difficult one to solve\u201d.<\/p>\n

He told the committee: \u201cWe are really stuck on the supported housing issue and we would welcome any help in trying to build that, we haven\u2019t had any significant changes that we\u2019ve been able to affect on increasing supported housing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Committee member Matt White highlighted \u201cquite stark changes\u201d over the last two years in the number of out of area placements, where patients are sent to mental health inpatient units far from their local area.<\/p>\n

The number of such placements reached nearly 700 in May 2024 and then dropped to zero by November. Since November it has increased to around 150.<\/p>\n

Cllr White said: \u201cWe\u2019ve got a narrative [in the report] which doesn\u2019t really explain the reasons for those changes. It states an aim to reduce OAPs [out of area placements] that doesn\u2019t really go into detail about how you plan to do that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dr Kirchner said the trust had been able to maintain a lower level of out of area placements through introducing a new model of care which brings a \u201cdaily rhythm\u201d to ward and \u201cdaily decision making\u201d.<\/p>\n

He pointed out that nationally there had been a much \u201cgreater demand\u201d for mental health services, particularly following the pandemic, and inpatient beds weren\u2019t being built but in fact \u201ccoming down\u201d.<\/p>\n

Committee member Chris James said some of the data in the report, unless read by an expert \u201cdidn\u2019t mean anything\u201d and more context would help.<\/p>\n

She added the improvements in out of area placement figures was \u201creally good\u201d and needed to be highlighted.<\/p>\n

Cllr Connor said having a more joined-up approach in terms of how patent information was shared between GPs, carers and families was an issue discussed last year.<\/p>\n

Dr Kirchner acknowledged a lot of carers and families felt \u201cexcluded\u201d but this work wasn\u2019t being measured as it depended on which service was involved or the age of the patient.<\/p>\n

Cllr Connor recommended this be tracked in future.<\/p>\n

Never miss another news story, subscribe to Harrow Online for FREE!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Councillors have told a North London mental health trust to better demonstrate how it is improving amid concerns…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":133982,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7757],"tags":[32316,748,28057,393,4884,7833,105,257,12,58893,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-133981","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-london","8":"tag-barnet","9":"tag-britain","10":"tag-camden","11":"tag-england","12":"tag-great-britain","13":"tag-harrow-online","14":"tag-health","15":"tag-london","16":"tag-news","17":"tag-north-london","18":"tag-uk","19":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114575722854797183","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133981","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=133981"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133981\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/133982"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=133981"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=133981"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=133981"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}