Surrey and Borders Partnership NHS Foundation Trust together with Elysium Healthcare have joined forces to provide the first NHS funded mental health inpatient service for young people in Surrey for more than a decade. The partnership brings together complementary expertise and best practice to manage the inpatient unit and deliver a high-quality service for young people.
It provides 12 inpatient beds for young people between 13 and 18 years old with a wide range of disorders and complex needs.
It is located in Charlwood in Surrey, which means for the first time in more than 10 years, young people with acute mental health needs who require inpatient care can be treated within Surrey, closer to their home and community.
The new unit was named by an enthusiastic group of young people who took part in a naming workshop, which was held in Guildford in October 2022, where they collaboratively brainstormed and generated ideas. The participants wanted a name which didn’t sound clinical, appealed to a range of ages and evoked imagery. There was a clear favourite - Emerald Place, which the young people felt symbolised soothing energy, freshness, and vitality.
Funding has been provided by NHS England to establish, staff, and operate the unit as part of a national NHS programme to provide specialised services which meet the needs of local populations. Funding has been awarded to the Surrey Heartlands CAMHS Tier 4 Provider Collaborative. CAMHS Tier 4 refers to inpatient beds for children with acute mental health needs.
For more information about the service, including a virtual tour, please visit Elysium’s website.
Background
Surrey County Council and Surrey’s Clinical Commissioning Groups held a public consultation to develop their emotional wellbeing and mental health strategy for 2019-2022. This highlighted that young people preferred to be placed in local inpatient units where their family and carers can visit easily and support their recovery. Evidence also shows that discharge planning is impacted by the distance between community providers and inpatient units.
Currently, young people in Surrey requiring an inpatient stay need to travel further afield to receive care. However, by opening a unit in Surrey, this will keep a focus on local arrangements and secure effective local pathways across health, social care, and education, particularly for young people who need a complex discharge package.
Whilst the level of demand for inpatient beds in Surrey is below the regional average, this new unit will also provide additional capacity for the southeast region. It will reduce out-of-area placements for young people across Surrey, facilitate earlier discharge and lead to better outcomes for young people.
Managing inpatient beds for young people in Surrey
Inpatient beds for young people in Surrey are provided through a Provider Collaborative, led by Surrey and Borders Partnership.
Provider Collaboratives are a new way of working and enable the NHS and independent health providers to share learning, clinical expertise, and innovation to be able to continuously improve services.
The Provider Collaborative for young people’s inpatient beds (also known as the CAMHS Tier 4 Provider Collaborative) brings together a group of specialised mental health providers who have agreed to work together to improve the care pathway for their local population.
The new inpatient until will provide much-needed additional capacity for the Provider Collaborative within Surrey and more widely across the southeast region.
Our approach
Our aim is to support, treat and empower each young person to be able to live a safe and independent life and achieve their individual potential.
We will provide timely and appropriate assessment and intervention to facilitate the young person’s recovery journey enabling them to be safely discharged into the care of local community emotional wellbeing and mental health teams provided by Mindworks Surrey. We will work closely with Mindworks Surrey, to ensure the care pathways are fully integrated to support the young person’s needs.
A dedicated multidisciplinary team, will provide person-centred treatment and care that is tailored to meet each individual’s needs. Our therapies focus on the four core skill areas - mindfulness, distress tolerance, emotion regulation and interpersonal effectiveness. We aim to equip young people with coping skills that will increase resilience, reduce self-injury, and enable them to monitor, regulate and manage their emotions.
Young people are also given the opportunity to engage in appropriate therapeutic programmes such as family and trauma therapy.
What will the new unit provide?
The 12-bed inpatient unit offers a safe and nurturing environment to support and aid recovery and includes:
- Twelve general adolescent beds all with ensuite facilities. Young people are encouraged to individualise their own bedrooms, so they feel comfortable and at home.
- A lounge and dining area providing the opportunity to socialise.
- Multi-purpose, activity and sensory rooms, and a quiet room.
- An Ofsted registered school to enable the young people to continue with their schooling whilst in treatment. They are legally required to attend school unless medical staff. consider they are too unwell to do so. The school timetable and attendance expectations are tailored to meet their needs. This helps to ease re-integration and transition to home, or the community, when they are ready for discharge. Each young person has their own tailored education programme.
- A tribunal and meeting room, multi-faith room, family visit room and interview room
- Courtyard gardens providing access to safe outdoor space
- To ensure we designed and delivered a unit which met the needs of young people, young people were involved in aspects of the design process and also named the unit.