We’ve been engaging about how to improve older people’s mental health and dementia services since 2017 and making changes to improve the experience for patients and their carers accessing our services - helping people to live well in their communities.

Impact of the pandemic

In April 2020, the pandemic was having a big impact on the staff we had available across our hospital wards. We had to take the difficult decision to temporarily close Manthorpe ward in Grantham and redeploy this team to support other older people’s wards in Lincoln and our community teams.

With the longer than expected impact of the pandemic on health services, the ward has remained closed since then, but we’ve been piloting a new hospital at home approach to prevent vulnerable older people going in to hospital which we are seeing a really positive impact from.

What is happening next?

This new hospital at home approach appears to be having a positive impact and now that the pandemic is having a less substantial impact on our wards, we want to evaluate the full potential of dementia home treatment.

We’ve therefore made the decision to expand the pilot for a further 12 months, expand the help and support the team can offer and do more engagement and evaluation on its impact.

To do this, we need to use the resources and staff allocated to Manthorpe ward and therefore the ward will remain closed during this time.

Whilst we have done lots of engagement already during the closure, we want to ensure everyone affected has the opportunity to comment. We are therefore hosting a number of engagements events and will be popping along to talk to community groups about the changes, to allow as many people as possible to tell us what they think.

We’d love for anyone who is using/or has used our dementia services to come along.

If you aren’t able to attend however you can still share your views via our online survey available at https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/hospital-at-home 

or email lpft.involvement@nhs.net

Engagement events