The aim of community mental health transformation is to better support people with severe mental health problems in their communities and create a more accessible and flexible system by bringing together mental health services with GP practices, social care, the voluntary sector, and community groups. 

We have been developing new ways of bringing together primary and secondary care with social care, other local authority services, our third sector and local communities to support people with severe mental health problems, including complex emotional needs associated with a diagnosis of ‘personality disorder’ and disordered eating. 

This pioneering transformation work – which began in our inner London footprint as one of the 12 national ‘early implementer’ sites in autumn 2019, and started in Bedfordshire and Luton in April 2021 – is an ambitious programme of change up to 2023/24. 

It involves lots of conversations with staff from stakeholder organisations, service users and local citizens to design and test new ways of working, and to help reshape community mental health services enabled by new NHS Long Term Plan investment. 

Through workshops, focus groups and localised work in newly-formed ‘blended teams‘, we aim to coproduce improvements to mental health care based in and around primary care networks (PCNs).