Liaison Psychiatry Services

1. Where are we now?

• Providing care and treatment in home settings, outpatient clinics, inpatient care, virtual appointments and to people in Leeds Teaching Hospitals.
• We have lengthy waits for our ME/CFS Team and NICPM.
• Attained accreditation from PLAN (Psychiatric Liaison Accreditation Network) in July 2023.
• Nursing recruitment has improved in ALPS and HMHT over the past six months.
• Staffing has improved across NICPM but some challenges remain due to specialist nature of some roles.
• We have recently reopened the two closed beds on NICPM taking us back to eight beds.

2. Where do we want to be in 12-18 months' time?

• Better at managing our capacity and reducing our waiting times for ME/CFS Team, Psychosexual Medicine Service & NICPM.
• Improving the experience of those who attend Emergency Departments for mental health crisis.
• Enhanced care and support for people with dementia in Leeds Teaching Hospitals.
• Improved connections between various specialties, mental health outpatient services and clinical programs.
• Employ and train at least one apprentice Health Support Worker on NICPM.
• To have reopened the Out of Area waiting list for NICPM.

3. How we are going to get there

• Expand Virtual Clinics to include remote group therapy.
• Create safe therapeutic assessment space within Leeds Emergency Departments.
• Continue to develop the Admiral Nurses service, and specialist liaison nurse role in our transfer of care team.

4. How we will improve service user and carer experience

• Involve service users and carers to plan for the future.
• Deliver and support mental health training to our Leeds Teaching Hospitals colleagues.
• Admiral Nurses supporting carers.
• Use feedback from friends and family to develop our services, and explore more effective feedback methods in HMHT and ALPS.

5. How we will improve staff experience

• Provide high quality induction to new staff.
• Support our staff after serious incidents to help them recover and to learn lessons.
• Provide educational and development opportunities including for medically-unexplained symptoms and trauma-informed care.
• Provide regular clinical supervision, appraisals and wellbeing assessments to team members.

6. How we will reduce health inequalities and improving equality, diversity and inclusion

• Work with Leeds Teaching Hospitals to support people with long term conditions who experience mental health issues.
• Better use of technology to reduce the need for people to travel to hospital.
• Provide access to treatment for those who previously could not attend appointments due to long term health conditions.
• Investigate technology to make it easier for service users and carers to give feedback, and help us track and report how well our services are working.