About
Why the work is being done
The challenge we are facing since COVID-19 lockdown is the lack of face-to-face therapeutic provision for service users. Since COVID-19 lockdown we have continued providing mental health support to clients and have seen a continual rise in the number of referrals to our services.
As a Consortium we have 12 member organisations supporting the delivery of therapy to our service users. Research conducted with our member organisations has highlighted that each organisation is at a different level of being able to offer virtual face to face therapy support. We wish to support this centrally through one system.
We continue to receive over 2500 referrals per month we are currently not able to provide face to face in person support, over 60% of those registered with us currently are choosing to wait until face to face therapy can begin, as we move into a second wave of lockdown in Birmingham our most pressing challenge is to try and have face to face provision in some format available to clients struggling with their mental health, ensuring their needs are met and support is given for their mental health recovery
Problem to solve
Our most pressing challenge is trying to provide face-to-face therapies to vulnerable individuals who are struggling with their mental health. Some users who were actively engaged with therapy prior to lockdown confirm they want some sort of face-to-face provision and are happy to have this virtually in order to continue receiving therapy.
When being referred to Living Well UK by a GP or through the NHS, our users would benefit from accessing online information such as the different face-to-face therapies on offer and choose the most suitable one according to their needs.
Who are the users and what do they need to do
User groups:
- Clients referred to Living Well UK through NHS/GP to our services
User needs:
As a person referred to Living Well UK by my GP for support with my mental health I need to be able to look at the type of therapies being provided by the organisation so that I can select the one most suitable for my needs.
- Therapists
User needs:
As a therapist working for the Consortium, based across different organisations I need to be able to review clients details securely, share documents with them and update their case notes in one central system so that I can ensure we are continuing to be able to provide a confidential service to our users and notes can be shared across the team securely.
- Admin/Triage team
User needs:
As a member of the admin and triage team based at Living Well UK I need to be able to allocate appointments for individuals who are referred to our services by seeing the relevant appointment times for therapists according to the therapy so that I can book the most suitable appointment for service users.
- Data Monitoring team
User needs:
As a member of the data monitoring team I need to be able to review how many referrals we have received and which therapist/therapy they have been allocated to so that I can create meaningful reports that can be shared with commissioning groups and can help us track and evaluate the number of people we are supporting, the types of therapies being accessed and the number of cases allocated to therapists