Involvement activity

We strongly believe that the public, patients, carers, staff, volunteers, and stakeholders play a vital role in contributing and developing mental health, learning disability and autism services through their experience of services, personally or in a caring role. This expertise is essential and places people at the centre of our services.

This is strongly highlighted throughout our Involving People Policy.

The public, patients, carers, staff, volunteers, governors, and stakeholders may be involved in some or all of the following ways:

• Designing services that are personal, caring and compassionate.
• Working together in co-production with the aim to get it right first time.
• Planning services in partnership with the people who use them and their family/carers.
• Running services by working alongside the Trust in paid or voluntary roles.
• Training, education, and recruitment of our people.
• Quality issues such as setting, monitoring, and improving standards across all teams who provide services for people we see.

Involvement is even more important as the Trust brings new service developments into Lincolnshire and the organisation challenges itself to always deliver services in the most caring, safe, responsive and effective way.

The Trust has worked hard to engage and involve people, listening to what people tell us is important and raises the profile of the patient, carer and professional delivering and receiving the care. 

The way the Trust engages has adapted throughout 2022/23.

• Following the restrictions from the COVID-19 pandemic we now offer both face to face and online opportunities, so people can choose how they want to be involved.
• The Trust’s participation team were able to support and facilitate over 848 engagement contacts, during this year which is a significant increase on the previous year.
• The team delivered on short, medium, and long-term projects using four different levels of engagement, from providing advice, guidance and facilitation right through to organising large scale events and public consultation.
• The peer engagement worker, with lived experience of mental health services, played a key role in supporting the team on a range of projects and worked in collaboration with different services. Through this work they have now secured a permanent position as a senior peer support worker within the Trust.
• The Trust has continued to work closely with wider system providers, partners, and colleagues to provide an intuitive, proactive response to service change and development through strong participation.

Throughout the year, the Trust has supported and facilitated a wide range of engagement activities that included:

• Supporting the older people and frailty services with a dedicated stakeholder group to support with service developments. We have organised and facilitated three Cuppa and Conversation events throughout Lincolnshire which included a marketplace for networking and dedicated workshops to raise awareness.
• Facilitating a series of engagement events throughout the summer 2022 to support the development of children and young people’s mental health services, as part of a long-term ambition to transform the way we deliver services alongside commissioners Lincolnshire County Council.
• Organised engagement events for stakeholders around the temporary closure of the Hartsholme Centre, the county’s male psychiatric intensive care unit (PICU).
• Arranging and facilitating engagement events to support a review of crisis and home treatment services.
• Formally consulting on mental health rehabilitation transformation and proposals to expand the community rehabilitation service and impact on Ashley House in Grantham, one of the Trust’s low dependency open rehabilitation wards. This included eight events across Lincolnshire, face to face and online options, along with surveys for both staff, patients and the public.
• Supporting Lincolnshire’s traveller communities and raising awareness of the health inequalities for this community. The Trust has a dedicated wellbeing link worker who works closely in partnership with the Lincolnshire Traveller Initiative to improve access to both NHS services and community support.
• Improving the involvement of people with lived experience of mental health, learning disability or autism in staff recruitment, and providing training opportunities to enable people with lived experience to join our appointment panels. During this year experts by experience have supported over 50 interview panels.
• Continuing to support the Personality and Complex Trauma service (PACT), with their specialist reference group which has now been running three years. The group act as a critical friend, supporting the production of leaflets, clinical pathways and has been instrumental in staff recruitment to the service.
• Ongoing participation in the development of adult inpatient and community rehabilitation services. This has taken place through the Community Rehabilitation Team Advisory Groups and other ad-hoc engagement events.
• Supporting the eradication of dormitories programme, facilitating the Building Together Focus Group, who have been instrumental in the design and build of the two new wards in Lincoln and the proposed development in Boston. We held regular site visits and supported engagement events throughout the design and implementation phases.
• Continuing an Adult Eating Disorders involvement group made up of patients, carers and staff. This group supports the development and expansion of the service, including in staff recruitment and the co-production of leaflets, questionnaires, and surveys.
• Facilitating a De-Prescribing Advisory Group made up of carers, patients and clinical staff. This group supports the system wide programme to look at the de-prescribing of medication and includes the co-production of promotional materials and applying for a joint national funding bid for developing a research project.
• Supporting focus groups to create sensory friendly environments on our inpatient wards. The group consisted of patients, carers, and staff with an interest in autism and learning difficulties and co-produced staff training and what sensory accessible equipment should be made available.