Delivered in collaboration with Camden Council and North London NHS Foundation Trust across the last 18 months from October 2023 to April 2025, Mind in Camden and Likewise embedded two members of staff in the Camden Mental Health Core Teams. We share our key learning from this period.
The aims of this Learning Programme
To create a sustainable approach to learning and coproduction in a multiagency environment of Camden’s Mental Health Partnership, centring on the Camden Core Teams and to benefit the wider health and care system in the longer term.
Collaboration with people using mental health services in Camden
We formed a Reference Group of service users to offer advice, consultation and co-design for community mental health services in Camden.
The Reference Group was involved in a number of projects, including:
- Advising on a research project assessing the impact of clinical psychology letters
- Designing a person-centred triage process in the Kentish Town Core Team
- Consulting on proposals to transform community mental health services in Camden
- Contributing recommendations for a report exploring the delivery of the Community Mental Health Framework in Camden
- Consulting on the extended opening hours to improve accessibility of mental health services
- Contributing insights to the local authority Public Health team’s Mental Health Needs Assessment for the borough
Co-design with staff and service users
We delivered two co-design processes:
- Winter Crisis Prevention: we rapidly developed a proposal for a voluntary sector-based prevention offer to reduce crisis admissions over winter by offering holistic, community support over winter months. This proposal was co-designed by voluntary sector staff and Core Teams service users.
- Landing Space: we co-designed a person-centred discharge process that integrates clinical and voluntary services, prevents relapse and maximise use of community resources. The design team, composed of NHS and VCS staff, alongside service users, created and presented three service blueprints.
Learning and Evaluation
Community Mental Health Framework Evaluation
Our largest evaluation project saw us evaluate and learn from the Camden Core Team’s implementation of the Community Mental Health Framework. This evaluation focused on the experiences of frontline staff and service users. We used the insights gained to celebrate the successes of the team as well as make recommendations for the future implementations of the framework in the NHS and within other organisations.
Our process was as follows:
- Condense the Community Mental Health Framework into an evaluative framework which we can use to assess how it has been implemented.
- Conduct interviews with staff across the Core Teams, as well as non-Core Teams stakeholders such as GPs, VCSE, and council staff.
- Use the insights from these interviews to assess the Community Mental Health Framework’s implementation as well as recommendations that can be made to improve implementation and support community-centred care.
We produced two different versions of the final evaluative report. One focused on the Core Teams and was intended for NHS decision makers. The other focused on recommendations for the broader mental health system in Camden and is intended for anyone else interested in our work.
Kentish Town Triage Process Evaluation
We supported an evaluation of a new way of conducting triage for the Kentish Town Core Teams. This new approach involved calling service users before a triage decision is made to learn more about their needs and hopes from the service.
As part of this evaluation, we analysed data including the volume of calls made and the amount of time spent on calls, as well as interviewing the member of staff making the calls and service users receiving them.
This resulted in a report discussing the successes and challenges of the triage process; offering tangible recommendations that have since been implemented
Other evaluation projects included:
- The creation of a Core Teams wide Outcome Framework
- Supporting an evaluative framework for the collaboration between the Population Health Nurses and the Community Development Workers in the Core Teams
What’s next?
The Learning Programme has secured funding from Camden Council to continue to embed a culture of learning and coproduction across Camden’s mental health system. Our next 12 months will focus on collaboration with the East Integrated Neighbourhood Team. We will be developing a blueprint for collaboration between a wider array of partners – including health services and council services – to address mental health need in Camden.
