Mental Health Scrutiny and Assurance Collaborative

Delivery of the Collaborative

Collaborative partners will meet bi-monthly and will focus on sharing intelligence and information gleaned through their respective activities and against criteria, consideration of risks and issues, sharing of good practice examples, and planning for scrutiny and assurance activities over the next 2 months. Concerns identified, and the handling of these will also be discussed.

They will also consider the involvement of people with lived experience in scrutiny and assurance activities, sharing examples of this, impacts and plans for development.

Each partner will continue to apply their own methodology to their respective scrutiny and assurance activities and the collaborative aims to compliment these methodologies. These criteria are intended to provide a standardised framework for considering, theming and reporting on feedback that is considered at each Collaborative meeting.

The criteria align with and build upon the published core MH standards and are:

1. Access to MH services

2. Assessment, care planning, treatment and support

3. Moving between and out of services (transitions of care)

4. Workforce

5. Governance and accountability

6. Patient and carer involvement and experience

7. Patient safety

8. Physical health and wellbeing

9. Application of legislation and patients’ rights

10. Public protection

11. Built environment

The lead organisation for this work will have responsibility for the planning, co-ordination and delivery of Collaborative meetings. Healthcare Improvement Scotland have offered to lead this for the first 12 months.

Business transacted at each meeting will be considered sensitive/confidential, and the minutes of each meeting will reflect this. Circulation of the minute will be restricted to Collaborative parties and Scottish Government.

Actions will be agreed at each meeting, and an action log maintained. This will be reviewed at each meeting by the Chair.

Any feedback from the collaborative that is determined to be a significant concern or higher risk, and has not been reported by individual scrutiny bodies, will be considered as a wider concern to be raised. The chair of the Collaborative will raise this with Scottish Government Care Quality and Standards Unit Head in the first instance.

The Collaborative will be subject to review with Scottish Government and scrutiny bodies after 12 months from its initial meeting, at which point the Collaborative members will be invited to make recommendations on improvements to the Collaborative, and the roles/responsibilities of the scrutiny bodies in this activity.

The lead organisation and Scottish Government will engage in a quarterly review process every three months after the initial meeting of the collaborative.

The Collaborative will also have a connection to the wider Sharing Health and Care Intelligence Network as a ‘thematic cluster’ which will help ensure that mental health has greater voice and visibility.