Mental Health Services Preparing For Surge In Sussex Post-Covid

Mental health services in Sussex are preparing for a “post-covid surge” in demand in the coming months.

The potential for a surge was discussed at a meeting of Sussex Partnership NHS Foundation Trust’s board of directors last Wednesday (July 29).

Asked about how prepared the trust would be, chief executive Sam Allen said work was ongoing to look at what resources would be available and whether more would be needed.

Ms Allen said:

“We can’t absorb this as business as usual because the surge will be increased demand on top of our usual demand.

“We do have quite a detailed recovery and restoration plan … [and] we are going back over that again.”

She added:

“In terms of our recovery and restoration plan we were in a position where we thought we would be able to address the surge without procuring any additional hospital-based capacity. 

“We are in the process of revisiting that at the moment, particularly with winter on the horizon, because our risk threshold for maintaining our current capacity … is signalling that we will need some additional capacity and we are looking to procure that.”

The potential surge was discussed again later in the meeting, with Peter Molyneux, the chairman of the board of directors, asking if trust leaders were confident they had set the level of risk correctly.

He said:

“When we were in the middle of Covid we were treating a lot of people in the community and we had empty beds. 

“We had some concern about whether we got the risk assessment right … and we had some concerns about people not coming forward during the peak of Covid.

“Now we seem to have a level of increased demand. Are we confident we are still setting the level of risk right, in terms of who is treated in the community and who is admitted?

“It feels like we have been through quite a big change; from where we were in February, where we were in May and where we are now.”

In response, Ms Allen confirmed that the level of risk was being reviewed and the trust was looking at procuring additional hospital beds in the coming months.

According to meeting papers, the trust is already beginning to see a rising demand across its services, with an increase in mental health presentations across Sussex.

Calls to the trust’s 24/7 mental healthline had also increased during July, meeting papers say.

The surge would come after a period of low referrals to the trust’s Assessment and Treatment Services (ATS) during the initial stages of the coronavirus lockdown.

This had seen significantly improved waiting times, with 60 to 70 per cent drops in referral rates to ATS in late March and early April.

Notably, however, this trend was not seen in the Crawley ATS, which has seen referrals increase above average since the end of May. 

As a result, meeting papers say, Crawley has been identified as an area which will be uniquely impacted by the predicted surge; given the area’s demographic, its proximity to Gatwick and “the socio-economic factors related to this.”

Elsewhere, the board of directors heard, services have been seeing an increase in patients with psychosis who had not previously been known to the trust. 

As a result the trust is looking at moving staff into its crisis teams and urgent care pathways to increase its ability to cope with this increased demand.

By Huw Oxburgh - Local Democracy Reporter.