Hello everyone, I’m Vikki Caroline and I am very excited to be a part of Carers Leeds. 

My role at the organisation is Involvement and Engagement worker for carers of people with mental health difficulties. The role involves working in partnership with Carers Leeds and Leeds Involving People, representing and engaging carers, in the development of the new Community Mental Health Transformation Programme. 

I will be supporting carers to voice their opinions on how mental health services in Leeds can better identify their needs, and support carers further. 

Below is a summary of the Mental Health Transformation Programme but if you have any questions, please feel free to contact me by email. 

About the Programme 

The Mental Health Transformation Programme is a partnership of NHS organisations community and voluntary sector, Adult Social care, service users, carers and people with lived experience coming together to transform how primary and community mental health services are currently organised and delivered.   

Transforming Community Mental Health Services means bringing all the services and agencies that support people with varying mental health needs much closer together to ensure that people get the right care, without having to navigate multiple service boundaries and without repeatedly telling their story. 

The Leeds Model aim is to bring these services closer together and add new roles, with a new model of joined-up primary and community mental health that responds to local people’s needs and removes barriers to access, so that people can access care, treatment and support as early as possible and live as well as possible in their communities. 

How will we do this 

We will do this by: 

  • Providing holistic person-centred care 
  • Having a more joined-up approach with services working together, removing thresholds and barriers to access 
  • Involving service users and carers as equal partners in their care 
  • Building in involvement and co-production at all levels of service design delivery 
  • Delivering needs-led and personalised trauma-informed care. 

The new joined-up model will operate in what we are calling ‘Integrated Community  Mental Health Hubs’, which are close to people’s communities and aligned to local care partnerships (LCPs)  

Where are we now and next steps? 

  • We are just starting to work with the three pilot sites.
  • For those people not living in these pilot sites, the care and support they receive currently will stay the same

We will be designing and testing new types of care and support in partnership with people who currently use services and who have lived experience of complex mental health needs, and carers. 

For more information on the programme, please visit Mindwell or watch the video above.