The decision on a proposal to move adult mental health beds from St Andrews Ward in Wells to Yeovil will be made at the Somerset Clinical Commissioning Group Governing Body meeting on 24 September 2020.
Maria Heard, Programme Director, Fit for My Future, said:“Over the past two and a half years we’ve worked with staff, patients, carers and colleagues in the voluntary sector and people with an interest in mental health to co-create a new model of mental health care for Somerset which offers a full range of support from prevention and maintaining wellbeing through to crisis and inpatient care. We have also developed together a proposal to change the location of some of our adult in-patient mental health beds.
“Following a 12 week public consultation on this proposal earlier this year and in-depth discussions with key stakeholders and partners we are now ready for a decision to be made on the proposal for change.”
Over the 12 weeks 63 consultation events were held which were attended by 732 people. 538 responses were received to the consultation survey.
Dr Peter Bagshaw, GP and clinical lead for mental health and dementia, Somerset Clinical Commissioning Group said: “We would like to thank everyone who took part in our consultation and shared their views with us. There were many suggestions for how we can improve adult mental health care and these have helped inform our future plans.
“Our goal is to provide best care in the safest possible way and we believe the best way to do this is to provide acute beds for mental health inpatients on two sites instead of three.”
The full consultation report and summary, Decision Making Business Case and other supporting materials will be available on Somerset Clinical Commissioning Group’s website as part of the Governing Body’s meeting papers. Papers will be available online five days before the Governing Body meeting.
The Governing Body meeting will be held online via MSTeams due to the current restrictions on public gatherings due to the Covid-19 pandemic. The meeting will take place on Thursday 24 September from 9.30am. If you wish to view the meeting proceedings in real time, please send a request to kathy.palfrey@nhs.net Questions from the public must be submitted using the public questions form (available on the website) and sent via email to kathy.palfrey@nhs.net by midday on Tuesday 22 September 2020.
The decision of the Governing Body on the proposal will be shared after the meeting on social media and on the Fit for My Future website, as well as the Somerset Clinical Commissioning Group’s website.
