Developments at Cove Healthcare, Smallwood Manor Hospital
Lee Smith, Founder, and Oliver O’Connell, Operations director, met Liz Mellor, Director of Strategy and Partnerships from North Staffordshire Combined Services, and Karen Webb, Deputy SRO Learning Disability and Autism Partnership from Staffordshire and Stoke-on-Trent Integrated Care board, at Smallwood on Friday 3rd November. Liz and Karen have met the Cove Healthcare team at Smallwood several times and have developed an excellent relationship with us over the past 12 months. They were visiting to get an update from us regarding progress at Smallwood, and also to advise us of recent local and national developments within the CAMHS sector.
Karen updated us with her teams current analysis of – NHS England’s new Commissioning framework vision for transforming children’s mental health services policy in the UK. This NHSE document is likely to bring about widespread changes across all children’s mental health services, including inpatient CAMHS, over the next few years.
Karen reported that while the NHS’s vision is undoubtedly bold, it lacks detail, and the practical applications of the policy are difficult to envisage. In particular, the current inpatient General Adolescent Unit specification – ‘GAU CAMHS’ (the lowest clinical and security levels of inpatient CAMHS) – is subject to high levels of scrutiny and widespread changes to these units are called for. GAU’s historically and currently take the form of generic, multi-purpose clinical areas that admit a variety of young people, both voluntarily and detained under the Mental Health Act, and with a wide range of mental health difficulties. In practice, young people are often admitted into the first available bed, potentially not in their home area and away from their families, and into a peer group that might impact further on their particular difficulties. According to Karen, the new NHSE vision suggests the current GAU’s should become obsolete and be replaced with flexible units with far more emphasis on community, family involvement and outpatient work.
When we met on Friday, Karen and Liz expressed some concern over Smallwood’s position in the proposed new CAMHS landscape, given that we have 24 ‘traditional’ GAU beds proposed in development in the manor house. However, Lee and Oliver view these changes with optimism and confidence. The increased emphasis on outreach, family involvement and short-term admissions with early discharge / community interface, are all perfectly in line with Lee’s and Bev’s initial service model when they launched the Cove Healthcare business in 2021. ‘Traditional GAU’ was never a prominent feature of their service plans – their acquisition of the wonderful Smallwood site encouraged them to think about how the manor house could be utilised, and a GAU, as being universally applied in 2021, seemed the obvious solution. But it’s not rigid by any means. We have 8 low secure unit (LSU) beds also on the Smallwood site, which are now phase 1 of the Smallwood development. LSU’s, with their higher-specificity and acuity patient groups have a far more clear-cut role in any model of inpatient CAMHS, no matter how ambitiously transformative. These LSU beds, set to open during the latter part of 2024, have already been identified by NHSE as ‘sought after’, and this opening phase will ensure the successful launch of the service. We can then take a comfortable and measured approach to phases 2, 3 and 4 of the site, which would either be: the rethinking of the 24 beds in the manor house in line with the evolving NHSE policy changes; or the development of the 12-bed quadrangle unit; or the self-build 12-bed PICU, our uniquely innovative, flexible inpatient CAMHS design, pending patent protection. We can ‘shuffle’ these in accordance with the arising applications of the new NHSE policy when these become clearer.
So, Lee and Oliver’s take-homes from the meeting with Liz and Karen were really positive: the NHSE’s proposed policy changes are entirely in line with our own philosophy, vis-à-vis a transformative approach with less of a reliance on inpatient CAMHS and more on a flexible, community-interface model. Our exceptional resources at Smallwood, where we now have the opportunity to consider in a balanced way how our service is launched; together with our excellent established community residential provisions at Cove Care Residential and Cove Care Transitions; provide an integrated care pathway that perfectly embodies the proposed policy changes.
2024 is set to be an amazing year for the Cove Care group.
Recent Comments