The outbreak of Covid-19 has led to changes in the way some mental health and learning disability services are being delivered in Gloucestershire. One obvious change is that, due to social distancing, all of our services will minimise face to face contact and will use telephone, text and video-based technology to maintain clinical care.
All of our services have also been given a priority rating – Priority 1 services are those which are critical and essential. Priority 2 services are important, but less essential.
We are ensuring that, with increased staff sickness and a need to redeploy some clinicians where they are most needed, our Priority 1 services are fully maintained. Our Priority 2 services are either being scaled back or temporarily suspended.
Our Priority 1 services have been identified as:
Hospitals or Inpatient Units
- Wotton Lawn Hospital, in Gloucester
- Charlton Lane Hospital, in Cheltenham
- Honeybourne Unit, in Cheltenham
- Laurel House, in Cheltenham
- Berkeley House, in Stroud
All of the above will remain open and staff from the community services will provide support to maintain safe levels of staffing.
Urgent Care
- Crisis teams
- Mental Health Liaison
- Approved Mental Health Professional team
The services above will remain open to referrals and will prioritise patients with urgent clinical needs.
Community adult services
- Assertive Outreach
- Recovery Teams
- Older Person’s Community Teams
The teams above will combine into locality-based Community Mental Health Teams. These teams will remain open to referrals and will prioritise patients with the most urgent clinical needs. Their staffing will be boosted by Community Dementia Practitioners, Psychologists, Homelessness workers, Social Workers and Care Home Support.
Specialist Community Services
- The Eating Disorders team.
- The Perinatal team.
- The Criminal Justice liaison Service.
- The Gloucestershire Recovery in Psychosis team (GRiP).
The services above will all remain open to referrals and prioritise patients with the most urgent clinical needs.
- The Accommodation and Case Management Services will remain open and will support our provider partners to maintain placements for MH patients.
Learning Disability Community Teams
- Community Learning Disability Teams
- Learning Disability Intensive Support Service
- Intensive Health Outreach Team
The above teams will form locality-based teams and prioritise patients with the most urgent clinical need.
Primary Care
- Primary Care Mental Health Nurses
- Let’s Talk (IAPT)
These teams will remain open for support – primarily over the telephone or using digital options.
Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service (CAMHS)
Our CAMHs teams will join together to form a single team. They will remain open to referrals and will prioritise those younger patients with urgent clinical needs.
Some of our Mental Health and LD services have temporarily closed to new referrals. These services are:
- Memory Assessment
- Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder
- Autism Spectrum Conditions
These services will hold all existing referrals on their waiting list until the services reopen.
Our First Point of Contact centre will revise the way that it works to reflect the service changes described.
If you have any questions or concerns about services, please contact our service experience team at experience@ghc.nhs.uk
