Accessing Mental Health and Wellbeing Services for 18-25 Year Olds

Healthwatch Surrey is working with Frimley Health and Care Integrated Care System (ICS) and Surrey Heartlands Health and Care Partnership to better understand and improve the transition (moving from one service to another, leaving a service behind and starting somewhere new) of young adults (18-25) with complex mental health needs into adult mental health and wellbeing services.

An engagement and research exercise is taking place to gather insight and feedback from young people, families, carers and professionals. The aim is to better understand experiences of transition between services, gather feedback to understand what could be improved and to build upon existing engagement work and test three high level themes created as a result of previous workshops;

Transition & Access – preparation for transition, defining the transition processes, providing safe appropriate environments.
Prevention & Training – Co-developed training package for Young Adults transitioning as well as specific packages for workforce, families, and carers.
Communication & Messaging – clarifying a system wide mental health pathway, creating clear signposting through targeted communications and messaging about transitions.
To support this work the Frimley Health and Care ICS has developed a survey to share through existing networks across the system. The feedback obtained will support the work being led by Surrey Heartlands and Healthwatch Surrey. The overall aim is that this work will support the development of clearer pathways and smoother transfer for young adults with severe mental illness (SMI) and complex needs.

In order to improve the service provision offered, we would like to hear your thoughts on current ideas for change, as well as hear any other improvements that you think would make a difference to the experience of a young adult accessing Mental Health and Wellbeing services in the community.

The insight gained will provide a more holistic understanding of existing services and improve their design and accessibility. Additionally, the feedback will support the creation of an effective communications and messaging campaign to ascertain where awareness of services needs to be raised and more effectively communicated to young people.

We would like to hear from young adults who have had experience of accessing mental health services, their families and carers and professionals that work with young people and adults experiencing severe mental health.

The survey can be accessed via the following link and will remain open until at least Mid-February 2021:

https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/18-25Transition

For further information about this project or if you have any questions please contact Rebecca Isherwood-Smith: rebecca.isherwood-smith@sabp.nhs.uk