Bradford District Care NHS Foundation Trust will be celebrating the positive difference mental health services and staff have made to the health and wellbeing of local people across the district at an event on Friday 26 January.

The event will be held at Victoria Hall in Saltaire and will be attended by members of staff from the Trust’s mental health care services along with representatives from partner organisations. The celebration day will be an opportunity for teams to share good practice and highlight the innovative, compassionate and award winning care that has been cited as best practice nationally.

Attendees will hear how the Trust has been working in partnership with the West Yorkshire Police to ensure that people in mental health crisis are given safe and appropriate care, instead of being detained in police cells. The project is the first of its kind in the country. Six mental health nurses have been trained as police specials to go out on patrol, working alongside officers on the frontline on a variety of police duties. The partnership has led to a 90 per cent reduction in the number of inappropriate police detentions of people who require mental health care.

Grainne Eloi, Interim Head of Mental Health Services, will give an address on how the Trust has been working in partnership with the local authority, police and voluntary sector agencies to operate its First Response service which offers mental health crisis support 24/7 to vulnerable people. The Care Quality Commission’s 2017 report on the quality of mental health services in England highlighted that too many people have to travel out of their local area across England to receive treatment. Since the launch of the First Response service people are being cared for closer to home, with no out of area placements since the service launched on 6 March 2015.

The Trust’s Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service (CAMHS) team will share how it has been tackling long waiting times for young people’s mental health services, working as part of the West Yorkshire and Harrogate Health and Care Partnership to buck the trend. While many young people across the country are facing waiting times of up to 18 months to get the mental health care they need, for the past seven years the Care Trust has had a maximum wait of 11 weeks for routine referrals, and 24 hours or less for urgent referrals, exceeding the national waiting targets of 18 weeks. As demand for the service has increased, this work has continued and in some cases been improved upon by setting up specialist teams within CAMHS and designing new treatment pathways in collaboration with non-NHS providers to enable children and young people to continue to access services at an earlier stage.

Delegates will also hear how the Trust’s intensive home treatment (IHT) team works with hospital care teams to make sure that people have access to the right care when they are discharged from hospital. This streamlined approach has transformed the way that the Care Trust works with individuals to ensure that people get the care they need in the community.

The Care Trust will also be marking the first anniversary of MyWellbeing College at the event, which helps people navigate their way through life’s ups and downs. This free service launched in January 2017 and is available to anyone over the age of 16 who is registered with a GP in Bradford, Airedale, Wharfedale or Craven. The service can be accessed directly, without a GP referral. MyWellbeing College offers a range of services, including online courses, group sessions and one-to-one counselling, to help people tackle problems like low mood, stress and anxiety.

Teams from across the Trust will come together to celebrate these innovative services and the care of staff in making a positive difference to people’s lives. Grainne Eloi, Interim Head of Mental Health Services, said: “We want to continue to help those most vulnerable before they become seriously unwell through early intervention and prevention services. We’re committed to ensuring those who experience mental health issues are offered caring support, and projects like these from across our mental health services show how our staff are using innovative and creative ideas to constantly improve our services.”