New care model triggers surge in demand

Mental Health Together was introduced by Kent and Medway NHS and Social Care Partnership Foundation Trust across most of its patch earlier this year. It involves creating a single point of referral and assessment for multiple related services. 

However, a review reveals it received 15 per cent more demand from June-October than the same period last year. 

A November board paper says the change “led to the generation of unexpectedly high numbers of referrals into KMPT – sometimes seven times higher than previously”. It believes 40 per cent of referrals should have gone to “services other than KMPT”.

As of November the spike in demand had left 6,108 patients waiting for the service, of whom around half had received an initial assessment and were waiting for an “intervention”.

The trust expects it will take six to nine months to achieve the national objective of interventions beginning within four weeks of referral.

It is now recruiting additional assistant psychologists to deliver initial meetings and interventions, and reviewing processes to try to improve performance. It plans to reduce the waiting list for initial assessment to 1,500 by April.

Patients are referred to Mental Health Together – which is superseding the trust’s community mental health services – by GPs, and from there can be referred to services from the trust, social care, “lived experience experts” and the voluntary sector, among others.

A KMPT spokesperson, on behalf of Mental Health Together, said the service was “part of a national NHS ambition to improve access, quality, advance equalities, care for more people closer to home and provide integrated, person-centred care that goes beyond treating complex, mental health symptoms”.

It said it “anticipated an increase in referrals, though we have seen [more of] an increased number of referrals than we had forecasted”.

The spokesperson added: “This is both encouraging and reflective of the growing demand for accessible, high-quality mental health support in our community. Several factors have contributed to this rise. One is that we have broadened our service to provide support for additional needs that were not previously seen by secondary mental healthcare.

“Additionally, there is now an increased awareness among primary care of the services available, and we are following the new national guidelines for reporting wait times. While we acknowledge the challenges and scale of transforming patient pathways, we remain focused on providing high-quality mental health care and effective support to all who need it.”