Impact report: Better mental health support for children and young people in Birmingham


Following engagement with service users, their families/carers and Healthwatch Birmingham, Forward Thinking Birmingham (FTB) has made a number of important changes to mental health support for children and young people in Birmingham

29/07/2022
By Healthwatch Birmingham
Impact Reports 2022

Improvements made include:

  • Co-production with patients and carers, for example young people with lived experience designing training modules for staff.
  • Better communication with patients and families, including improvements to the FTB website and reviews of clinical letters sent to patients.
  • Funding for FTB staff to ensure greater consistency and variety of roles, alongside a Peer Support Worker programme, more student nurse placements and recruiting people with lived experience of mental health issues.
  • Increased staff awareness in working with patients with various needs, such as training in autism, reflective practice sessions and motivational interview training for support staff and clinicians.
Better mental health support for children and young people in Birmingham Download File (pdf 638.96 KB)

“For Forward Thinking Birmingham it has been vital to listen and act on the findings of the report. It matters to us that local people get the mental health services they need. We feel a huge responsibility to get things right and we use our patients’ feedback to make sure that we are continuously improving our services. Working together with Healthwatch, who have a place in our Think 4 Brum forum (a young people engagement group), and our patients, we have collectively worked on three very important elements of improvement. Not only have we done this, but we are also placing importance on our urgent care and crisis systems and undertaking a review of our substance misuse services and personality and complex trauma pathway.” - Elaine Kirwan, Director Of Nursing, Forward Thinking Birmingham

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