Gloucestershire
Within Gloucestershire, we have Mental Health Practitioners working in practices in Gloucester City, as part of a Pilot project which commenced in April 2017 and is gradually expanding. There are currently 3 practitioners (2.6WTE) working within 5 practices providing in-hours care to patient both face to face and with telephone appointments. The practices each have differing systems of how they utilise the Mental Health Practitioners, but most patients are booked in to see the practitioners through the Practices’ local triage system.
The pilot has now been extended for a further year for the current practitioners and an additional 3 WTE MH Practitioners will be put into 3 further Inner City practices. The project will be undergoing evaluation & working groups are being established.
New Mental Health Training Resources
Gloucestershire County Council have published a suite of resources to support you and your teams when working with an individual who may be experiencing emotional distress, linked to or heightened by the coronavirus outbreak.
Resources include:
- A 30 minute training video which is a basic introduction to mental health, how it may be affected by Covid-19, signs and symptoms to look out for and how to look after our own mental wellbeing. This is aimed at anyone, but especially those with no previous experience of working with mental health.
- A 45 minute training video which equips viewers with knowledge and skills to deliver ‘Psychological First Aid’, the World Health Organisation recommended tool to identify and support people in distress following a crisis or traumatic event. This video can be viewed by anyone but is particularly relevant to NHS and social care staff, first responders and coordinators of community led initiatives.
- A script/ conversational guide for supporting people through emotional distress, to support professionals and volunteers who may be contacting vulnerable people or people in states of emotional distress. It includes advice about wording, appropriate questions to ask, how to phrase your questions, things to be aware of when speaking with someone, and support that can be signposted to.
All resources can be found here
Advanced clinical practitioners
This website may be useful for more information:
Workforce Transformation and Education – Advanced Clinical Practice Click Here >
Non-Medical Prescribing
These websites may be useful for more information:
NM Prescribing Click here >
University of the West of England NMP Click here >
Severe Mental Health – Free online training support
NHS Learning Hub have free online training to support with SMI (severe mental health) checks in primary care. For further information please click here.