Manchester Assertive Outreach

Winning Bid : Manchester Assertive Outreach Tender

From the Manchester Mental Health Joint Commissioning Team Website, Best For Health (http://www.bestforhealth.nhs.uk), 12/02/07:

Voluntary sector organisation HARP has been awarded the contract to deliver the new assertive outreach service in Manchester jointly with Manchester Mental Health & Social Care Trust (MMHSCT).

Assertive outreach aims to help people with serious mental health problems who find it hard to engage with mainstream services, often due to other problems such as drug or alcohol abuse and homelessness. HARP and MHSCT already jointly provide one assertive outreach team in Manchester, able to work with around 100 people, but it's estimated that around 300 people in the city would benefit from the service.

The new assertive outreach service will be expanded to three teams covering the whole city. The teams will include occupational therapists, nursing staff, psychologists and social workers. In addition to providing clinical treatment, the service will also help people with housing and welfare problems, help them get into education or employment and generally encourage links with the local community. The service should be up and running by June this year.

The service is part of wide-ranging changes to the city's mental health services, which will see new crisis and emergency provision and an expansion in community-based services, backed by a £4m increase in funding.

Assertive Outreach was put out to competitive tender and shortlisted candidates were interviewed by a panel including former service user, Jackie Barber.

Says Jackie: "I wanted to sit on the panel because I feel very strongly that there needs to be more community services, to help keep people out of hospital. I spent five months on a ward, mainly because the services to support me in the community just weren't there. Beds aren't the answer - it takes social workers, help with housing and therapeutic work to help people recover and get their lives back together. And services like assertive outreach, that reach out to the most vulnerable people on the streets, need to be available across the whole of Manchester."

Jackie was joined on the interview panel by Paula Potter, an assertive outreach team leader from the Wirral and Tom Dodd, an assertive outreach expert from the National Institute for Mental Health in England (NIMHE). Also sitting on the panel were three representatives from Manchester's Mental Health Joint Commissioning Team (JCT), who commission mental health provision in the city and are overseeing the changes to services.

Head of the JCT, Chris O'Gorman, said: "Expanding specialist community services like assertive outreach is a key part of the planned changes to mental health services, to ensure there is proper support when and where people need it. HARP and the Mental Health Trust put together a very strong bid for the contract. They've been running an excellent service for a number of years which has been limited in the numbers it can cater for - I'm pleased they'll now be able to build on this experience to provide a much-needed service across the whole city."