{"id":199501,"date":"2025-06-20T09:26:13","date_gmt":"2025-06-20T09:26:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/199501\/"},"modified":"2025-06-20T09:26:13","modified_gmt":"2025-06-20T09:26:13","slug":"somerset-health-bosses-vow-better-tracking-of-mental-health-issues","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/199501\/","title":{"rendered":"Somerset health bosses vow better tracking of mental health issues"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n June 13 marked the second anniversary of the tragic killing of Taunton teenager Barnaby Webber, one of three people who was fatally stabbed in Nottingham by\u00a0Valdo Calocane in 2023.\n<\/p>\n

\n Following the conclusion of the criminal case against Calocane, NHS England and the Care Quality Commission (CQC) have been reviewing mental health services across the UK, trying to assess how Calocane was failed and what needs to be done to prevent similar events in the future.\n<\/p>\n

\n The\u00a0NHS Somerset integrated care board (ICB) has now published an action plan to improve its own mental health provision \u2013 though it will require up to \u00a33m of additional government funding to fully implement all the planned changes.\n<\/p>\n

\n Ian Coates, Grace O\u2019Malley-Kumar and\u00a0Barnaby Webber were killed in Nottingham on June 13, 2023 by Calocane, who was subsequently sentenced in February 2024 to spend the rest of his life in detention at a high-security hospital.\n<\/p>\n

\n Calocane had been a patient of Nottinghamshire HealthCare Foundation Trust, having been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia in 2020 and been sectioned four times in less than two years.\n<\/p>\n

\n READ MORE:\u00a0Taunton student to cycle 53-miles for Barnaby Webber Foundation | Somerset County Gazette<\/a>\n<\/p>\n

\n The\u00a0Care Quality Commission (CQC) recently completed a review of the trust\u2019s\u00a0mental health services, recommending (among other things) that all trusts carry out a similar review and implement any necessary changes.\n<\/p>\n

\n Subsequently, NHS England asked all trusts and ICBs to review the effectiveness of their intensive and assertive community treatment (IACT) services, focussing on \u201cpeople with severe mental illness who\u00a0require treatment but where engagement is a challenge\u201d (i.e. failing to attend appointments, take medication or otherwise accept help).\n<\/p>\n

\n The issue was discussed when the ICB met at NHS Somerset\u2019s Yeovil headquarters on Thursday morning (June 19).\n<\/p>\n

\n Neil Jackson, deputy service group director for mental health and learning\u00a0 disabilities, said: \u201cPart of the request [from NHS England] was that\u00a0we created\u00a0 a \u2018high risk of harm list\u2019 for posting, so the\u00a0team was very clearly aware of all of the patients that are high risk.\n<\/p>\n

\n \u201cWe\u2019ve\u00a0managed to get that into our governance meetings in the senior leadership team, so on a regular basis we have a member of the team that\u2019s able to discuss with us all of the high risk patients, so that we\u2019re clear about what\u00a0measures we need to take if necessary.\n<\/p>\n

\n \u201cWhen our staff are assessing patients, they\u2019re not only looking for risk to themselves or to the patients themselves, but they\u2019re also looking very clearly at risk to others, which is something that perhaps wasn\u2019t done as much before we implemented new training.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

\n Mr Jackson said Somerset\u2019s in-patient provision for mental health patients (i.e. dedicated wards where they can receive safe treatment) was in the middle of \u201ca two-year transformation programme\u201d, focusing on providing better continuity between inpatient and community care (to prevent patients slipping through the net).\n<\/p>\n

\n The action plan also mandates that patients who are discharged from hospital have clear care and support plans in place, in line with Section 117 of the updated Mental Health Act 1983.\n<\/p>\n

\n Mr Jackson said: \u201cWe\u2019ve done a very good update on the policy recently, which means we\u2019ve got a really clear check-list, with really clear guidance for the inpatient wards, social services, the local authority and the community services that we manage.\n<\/p>\n

\n \u201cOne\u00a0of the main benefits for us with this is we\u2019ve got clear templates, so that we can be clear when people have been discharged from hospital.\n<\/p>\n

\n \u201cWe\u2019re really\u00a0monitoring them very closely, especially within the first few weeks, and then being able to have a clear review pattern over the next the following years and months to come.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

\n One of the main problem with severe mental health patients is their failure to attend regular appointments or reviews \u2013 something which could lead to them being missed if their condition deteriorates at a later stage and they cause harm to themselves or others.\n<\/p>\n

\n READ MORE:\u00a0Taunton MP asks PM when Nottingham attacks\u00a0inquiry will start | Somerset County Gazette<\/a>\n<\/p>\n

\n Mr Jackson said: \u201cThere\u2019s now a really clear procedure to make sure that patient is contacted, monitored, and if they\u2019re not able to be contacted, staff continue to try.\n<\/p>\n

\n \u201cIf we get patients where we eventually can\u2019t get hold of them, we\u2019re having very regular disengagement meetings\u00a0 to make sure that everything\u2019s been done that could be done to ensure that we haven\u2019t lost that patient.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

\n Mr Jackson said work was also ongoing to ensure the different branches of healthcare could access a patient\u2019s medical notes seamlessly, with the creation of the\u00a0Somerset integrated digital electronic record (SIDER).\n<\/p>\n

\n He said: \u201cThis means that we\u2019re not asking the patients to give their story over and over again.\n<\/p>\n

\n \u201d It also means that we\u2019ve got access to really good safety plan management, so that we can share those safety plans with GPs and the local authority so they can respond quickly to patients.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

Treatment in county pledge<\/p>\n

\n The plan also includes a commitment to treating more patients within Somerset (rather than sending them outside of the county to access specialist services, at a potentially higher cost) and to improve the liaison between staff and patients\u2019 families to ensure they are properly supported.\n<\/p>\n

\n William Barnwell,\u00a0 associate director for mental health, autism and learning disability, said that implementing all these improvements to the fullest extent would cost around \u00a33m \u2013 funding that was not currently being provided by the Department for Health and Social Care (DHSC).\n<\/p>\n

\n He said: \u201cThe issue is that no\u00a0national funding has been allocated to this programme for delivery, and NHS England has asked us to prioritize actions that have no cost implications.\n<\/p>\n

\n \u201cThe autumn statement did mention some allocations for crisis care, which which might help in related areas to this work, but it\u2019s not a direct funding pot for intensive and assertive outreach.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

\n NHS England will now review the ICB\u2019s action plan, with an update expected to come back before the board in September.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"June 13 marked the second anniversary of the tragic killing of Taunton teenager Barnaby Webber, one of three…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":199502,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4317],"tags":[105,218,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-199501","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mental-health","8":"tag-health","9":"tag-mental-health","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114714980031573115","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199501","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=199501"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199501\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/199502"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=199501"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=199501"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=199501"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}