by Ranjeet Kaile
Where before NHS communication teams up and down the country may have had to fight to get heard, they are now the bridge bringing the organisation and the wider community closer together through a shared purpose.
You’ll learn:
• About the need for a multi-agency approach to deal with the increase in demand for mental health
services caused by COVID-19
• How action planning must be based on the needs of the community
• That the NHS comms role now more than ever is to support the transformation of hospitals into
community assets
Beyond the expected surge in mental health demand from existing service users, we can anticipate that there will be a much wider and deeper impact on the population as the country continues to deal with COVID-19.
Evidence shows that in times of significant crisis or financial turmoil, there is a substantial increase in people who have never previously accessed mental health services suddenly finding themselves in need of support.
We also know that there is a strong correlation with the impact that recessions have on the growth in suicidal behaviours. According to the Office for National Statistics we are now in the worst recession since World War II. We have all heard of the tragic increases in domestic violence.
The COVID-19 pandemic has forced us to reconsider so many of the rules of communication that have stood strong over the last 20 years or so. Pre-COVID, if you wanted to launch a big campaign to talk about the above issues you would bring people physically together. If you wanted to engage the community, you would contact them and then ask to come out and meet them. All of this, of course, is not possible in the current or ‘new normal’ world that we live in but all the while, the lack of engagement causes increased risk of social isolation and mental ill-health.
Traditionally prevention is the domain of public health administered through local authorities but COVID-19 has meant that rulebooks have been re-written, with the full support of partner organisations, to allow people to get the help they need now.
A multi-agency rallying call
South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation were the first off the blocks issuing a rallying call to all our statutory partners across south London to take part in an urgent virtual summit to prevent a mental health crisis. Council leaders, experts by experience, community partners and clinicians all answered the appeal.
Through social media, within five working days over 1000 people had registered to attend. On the 2 June 2020, we held our first virtual summit where leaders pledged that their organisations would take part in a two-year mental health prevention programme.
In July 2020, we formed the South London COVID-19 Preventing Mental-ill Health Taskforce, which has representation from the three mental health trusts, two integrated care systems, local authorities, healthwatch, councillors, community and experts by experience to help shape the ambitions of the programme. It is incredible when through all this darkness you can see rays of light coming through. Coronavirus has bound us towards a shared purpose like never before.
Through the work of the taskforce, clinicians and experts by experience, the outputs of the summit were refined into six key themes of focus including:
• Social isolation, loneliness and community involvement
• Helping people who are at risk of losing their jobs cope
• Housing insecurity and environment
• Supporting disadvantaged communities and groups
• Supporting families, children and young people
• Developing a long-term, joined-up approach to prevention
Our second virtual summit in November 2020 used these themes to focus heavily on action planning based on the needs of the community.
Working with the community
We knew getting into the heart of our communities was crucial. Following a robust procurement process, we partnered with the national charity Citizens UK to help us engage, in a COVID safe way, through a four-month community listening programme from November 2020 – February 2021. This will be followed by a Spring summit at which we will share the co-produced two-year action plan in its entirety.
Writing this down in this way feels like summarising war and peace onto a few pages but this multi-system programme of work is the culmination of hundreds of hours of work involving many people from across the south London system, who have all given their time to a cause that they feel strongly about and can see the very real danger of if we don’t take action in a united way.
Ultimately this tragic pandemic has thrust communications to the heart of the organisation’s business. Where once NHS communication teams up and down the country would be fighting to get heard, we now find ourselves as the bridge which brings the organisation and the wider community closer together through a shared purpose.
Our role now more than ever before is to support the transformation of hospitals into community assets. Assets that ultimately help to reduce health and social inequalities. The only way we can do this effectively is by opening the door wide open to ask for support from local communities who can use their networks to help us shape the solutions and convey our messages in a way we would never be able to dream of doing on our own.
The future remains to be seen as we move from one wave to another, one lockdown to the next, but what we do know is that we are committed for the long haul and that the strategic value of communications has never been more evident than ever before.
Ranjeet Kaile is the director of communications, stakeholder engagement and public affairs at South West London and St George’s Mental Health NHS Trust, as well as interim director of communications at South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust.
He has 20 years’ marketing and communication experience working in some of the country’s most challenging public sector arenas.
Since joining the Trust in 2013, Ranjeet has built an award-winning service leading a number of innovations that have directly benefitted patient care.
He is passionate about public services, community engagement and access to services. He is a Trustee for Alcohol Change UK.
Twitter: @Ranjeet_Kaile
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/ranjeetkailecommsleadership/