We have developed a strong partnership in Leeds between the third sector, public health, our Mental Health and Learning Disability Trust and adult social care.
In support of this work, Leeds Clinical Commissioning Group adult mental health commissioners fund a community grants programme (£100,000 per annum).
The all-age grants programme has been designed to support very local activity that addresses:
The first round of this grant funded 15 community organisations (predominantly black and minority ethnic VCSE organisations) to run a two-year programme to address psychological wellbeing and mental health needs within children, young people, adults and families across the city, with a further opportunity to receive funding for a third year.
The funding, which supports the children and young people’s element, is based on temporary funding which provides additional capacity.
The Synergi-Leeds partnership provides a forum in which to inspire and engage system and community leaders from across statutory and third sector services to address all forms of racism, further develop work within acute mental health settings and develop a community grants programme.
As a city, we have focused on developing the Synergi-Leeds partnership, which aims to energise and enable people to make changes within their own services and systems.
The current membership includes representation from statutory and third sector services from across the city with a passion and interest in improving the experience of ethnic minority groups in mental health services. Individuals interested in being catalysts for change across the system are encouraged to join.
As well as the network, we have a small core team who support the network function and capacity building across the system.
Leeds CCG provides £100,000 recurrently for senior capacity in the system and to fund grassroots mental health projects through a grants programme. The funding pays for an adult-focused post (hosted in Public Health). There is a similar but short term financial commitment from the Children and Young People’s NHS Commissioners. This funds a post focused on children and young people (hosted in the third sector) and a grassroots grants programme – administered with the adult grants as one programme.
Principles underpinning the work include:
Having a joint ‘think family’ approach between the adult, children and family posts ensures we are truly working across the system.
We are in the process of developing a wider expert group of service users and carers to work with the Synergi-Leeds Partnership to progress the agenda and relevant actions.
In 2019, it was agreed that Synergi-Leeds would be instrumental in supporting the delivery of Priority 2 of the Leeds Mental Health Strategy, ‘to reduce the over-representation of people from Black and Minority Ethnic backgrounds assessed and detained via the Mental Health Act’. This measure has also been adopted as a programme indicator for the Healthy Leeds plan.
This positioning made sense given the growing network and its engagement with a number of organisations from across the city working with BME groups, and also its unique approach to the work.
Inequalities in Mental Health Act detentions have remained intractable for over 50 years, and so for the partnership, how we address mental health inequalities experienced by BME groups is as important as what we do.
The priority seeks to make changes across pathways and services, taking a whole systems and life course approach, recognising the contribution of an individual’s lived experiences before detention, and how interventions (social, psychological, economic and environmental), across the life course may be preventative and/or mitigate the experience of severe mental illness.
Priority measures as identified in the Mental Health Strategy/Priority 2 Project Initiation Document:
Leeds and York Partnership NHS Foundation Trust
The trust has developed a dedicated Clinical Services Inclusion Team. This is made up of three Clinical Inclusion Co-ordinators embedded within perinatal services, community services and working age adults Crisis and Home Treatment team (CRISS).
The Clinical Inclusion Team supports colleagues, both frontline and within the leadership teams, to provide culturally responsive services, which improves the health of our local communities through better access and evidence-based interventions that takes into account issues of race, ethnicity and culture.
Objectives of the team include:
The team has an action plan that sets out the work they are doing with different teams/service areas, acknowledging that their interventions will be different based upon different needs.
A good example of this is the significant work that has been undertaken within the perinatal services, using media campaigns and developing community links to promote awareness and engagement/access to the perinatal services for women (and their families) from ethnic minorities.
Additional workstreams include the improvement of ethnic data collection and supporting the mental health transformation pathway design.
Third sector organisations in the city
Forum Central is Leeds’ collective voice for the health and care third sector. They have delivered training to third sector organisations on how to embed diversity and equality into all activity and processes – giving workers an opportunity to get a better understanding of Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic community experiences within work and society.
They have worked with Health and Wellbeing Board partners to develop the Leeds Health Inequalities toolkit which sets out how to improve equitable access and outcomes in services.
The Leeds Culturally Diverse Hub: Launched a national group to develop the strategy for the Phoenix Way for black organisations. They are also looking at a national alliance to influence funders and create sustainability through a leadership project to grow and strengthen black-led organisations.
Leeds Mind and Black Health Initiative: These two organisations in Leeds have established Young Black Minds – a programme that focuses on providing a safe space for young black men aged between 16-25, to talk about their mental health and to seek support. This project has successfully attracted additional short term West Yorkshire Integrated Care System funding, and Leeds Place Health Inequalities funding.
Partnerships and Innovation
Occupying A Space of Safety – OASIS
Leeds Survivor Led Crisis Service, Leeds City Council, Touchstone, Leeds and York Partnership Foundation Trust and Leeds CCG, have established a safe haven service located in Leeds.
Leeds Safe Haven provides a brief period of intensive residential support for people in Leeds experiencing a mental health crisis. It offers compassionate support and prevents admission to hospital. Residence in the house supports the person through the initial period and could be for as brief a period as 24hrs, but will be no longer than the maximum seven days.
The partner organisations have worked collaboratively to ensure the developing service model pays due attention to the needs of minority ethnic groups and is designed to support and meet their needs as well as develop strong links with a range of communities.
An expert advisory group of users of mental health services across the partnership was established to support the service design and its evaluation. Lived experience colleagues are also in attendance and have a voice at leadership meetings, influencing the development of procedures and protocols to enhance the experience of those who access the service.
Leeds produced a citywide mental health needs assessment in 2017, which brought together data from across the mental health sector, IAPT, primary care and the third sector. This informed the development of several work programmes in the city and ultimately engagement with the Synergi Pledge.
We are working together to share data and intelligence about Mental Health Act assessments, detentions, and Community Treatment Orders.
As a partnership, we have agreed a methodology and reporting schedule/mechanism to be able to track Mental Health Act detentions (and routes into detention) for BME communities over time. This data is being used to monitor progress against the Leeds Mental Health Strategy and NHS Leeds Health Inequalities Programme.
Key metrics include:
Using data in this way has meant developing trust across organisational boundaries and wider understanding about the inequalities they indicate.
Recent community mental health transformation data has provided more granular Primary Care Network (PCN) level intelligence about mental health prevalence and ethnicity which will enable more focused targeting of resources.
Forum Central, Voluntary Action Leeds and Leeds Community Foundation are working to both increase and better understand culturally diverse leadership and representation across their 3,000 third sector organisations
As explained in response to Synergi Pledge Partnerships section, the all-age Synergi Leeds grants programme (£100,000 per year) funded 15 community organisations in the first round to run a two-year programme to address psychological wellbeing and mental health needs within children, young people, adults and families across the city, with a further opportunity to receive funding for a third year.
Successful applicants include local trusted organisations who have been key to developing trust and shifting cultures alongside smaller, hyper-local groups. All grant holders are being supported by Leeds Community Foundation; the core Synergi-Leeds team and have been offered mentorship opportunities via larger third sector organisations.
The ambition is that the funded projects which demonstrate impact will be supported through continuation funding or supported to seek relevant/alternative funding streams.
The grant holders are also offered six monthly networking opportunities to support each other and develop stronger peer networks, providing the bedrock for scaling up and collaboration.
Case Studies
Calm and Centred CIC is a black-led Community Interest Company that delivers wellbeing services, therapies and self-help strategies to address health inequalities.
The organisation provides support and sessions focused on bereavement and mental health. Sessions include journaling, active listening, a monthly peer to peer support group, community drop-ins, therapy sessions, workshops, counselling and the distribution of wellness packs. The outcomes include increasing access to bereavement support, reducing social isolation and anxiety, and improving mental health and wellbeing.
The project is supporting over 40 BME adults over two years. It is delivered citywide, but beneficiaries come from the Chapel Allerton and Chapeltown area of Leeds, which falls amongst the 20% and 10% most deprived areas in the country (The Index of Multiple Deprivation 2019).
New Wortley Community Association supports black and minority ethnic adults with a focus on asylum seekers and refugees. The ‘cultural café’ is delivered in the Holbeck and Armley area of Leeds which falls amongst the 10% most deprived areas in the country (The Index of Multiple Deprivation 2019).
The community cultural café has a focus on health and wellbeing. Activities such as cooking, crafts and health checks are delivered along with welfare support. The project outcomes are to increase confidence, improve mental health, improve wellbeing, reduce barriers, increase access to support and welfare and create opportunities for socialising and ultimately to reduce the risk of severe mental illness.
Chapeltown Youth Development Centre provides a range of sport and wider activities in the Chapeltown area of the city. The grant funding has enabled the organisation to fund a mental health worker. This post delivers counselling and workshops to young people from diverse backgrounds and provides 1-1 support for young people and families – as well as taking referrals from other organisations. The workshops reduce the stigma of mental health conditions and create open conversations about mental health.
There is a strategic and financial commitment to continue to work in partnership with culturally diverse communities and services, and we are building relationships and connections into wider programmes, such as the Community Mental Health Transformation Programme.
We have taken part in the West Yorkshire Integrated Care System Culturally Diverse review. This aimed to understand the impact of racial inequalities across health and social care.
We have facilitated a number of workshops including the West Yorkshire Adversity, Trauma and Resilience three day Knowledge Exchange event in April 2022. The workshop attracted stakeholders from across the health, care and education system, and focused on racial trauma and the role of Synergi-Leeds in addressing ethnic inequalities in mental health across the life course.
We made a national presentation at the Psychological Professions Network Conference 2021.
Supporting inclusive communities is a key aspect of Leeds Health and Wellbeing Strategy and Leeds Mental Health Strategy.
There is a broad, long term programme of work underway in the city to improve the wider determinants of mental health and illness, primarily led by the third sector, public health and the wider local authority.
Leeds has implemented a citywide hate crime strategy and a citywide approach to Islamophobia and anti-racism. Specific support is also provided to migrant communities through community language-enabled volunteers, a strategic approach to migration and to the delivery of a language programme for those citizens who do not have English as a first language.
In funding a number of smaller, grassroots community organisations through the all-age grants programme, we hope to bolster and support good mental health and build capacity within organisations to support individuals, families and communities.
Our ambition is to grow the Synergi-Leeds grants programme to support the development of the sector, and the dissemination of learning.
Synergi-Leeds partnership is linked into and is influencing the Leeds community transformation agenda and delivery model.
We continue to explore opportunities for a more formal evaluation of the impact of our approach and any system changes.
We are working with Professor Stephen Coleman to develop co-production videos about the experience of service users and carers within mental health services.
Professor Coleman will provide research statistics to support each of the videos and produce an evaluation of the project, including the process of sampling, interviewing video production and video reception.
Yes, to enable us to keep track of our progress against the seven key commitment areas.
Following a paper with an update on the Synergi-Leeds partnership, and the Synergi National Pledge, members of the Partnership Executive Group have committed to identifying a senior executive sponsor for Synergi-Leeds to represent the work across the system, locally and nationally.
Over the next six months:
On Thursday 25th November 2021, the Synergi National Pledge Alliance was launched (virtually) in response to Pledge commitment 4: To provide national leadership on this critical issue, which you can find out more about here.
The Alliance’s primary aims are to:
Shared learning on the benefits of collaboration and evidence on best practice, which may attract wider membership and renewed commitment.
We would like to take part in themed sessions around each of the pledge commitments to learn and collaborate.
I am incredibly proud of the progress that has been made by the Synergi-Leeds Partnership, focusing on grassroots change and impact through what has been the most challenging year for all communities. The importance of driving real and sustainable change for BME communities to address the inequalities in access and outcomes has never been more compelling. Ensuring we evaluate the impact of work to date and continue to learn from other Pledge Maker partnerships is important to us. Our challenge to our system partners in Leeds is to ensure the work to date is sustained and built upon in the coming years.
Dr Sara Munro, Chief Executive Officer, Leeds & York Partnership NHS Foundation Trust