Project5 is an early intervention service and mental health delivery service, designed to activate and support existing/planned  CCG regional wellbeing rollout- to fill the gaps in service provision, to listen and learn at pace and to provide an independent offer for staff who have this need. It is built on 6 principles.

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1. Pace : rapid delivery at scale, to provide what people need - when they need it. The ability to respond to evidence - to retrain the whole delivery team when needed.

2. Quality : support that is governed at the highest standards of evidence and clinical governance. Standardised practice across the whole team, updated CPD when needed and evidence-based training of the team. Supervision, efficacy assessment etc… all compliant with this approach.

3. Accessibility : a service that is accessible to most people that need it - actively embracing the challenge of providing access to those usually most hard to reach. 

4. Scalability : a service that is able to work at varying scales - the team localilty level through to the whole CCG - and repeatedly.

5. Spreadability : a service that is easily adoptable and understandable - not threatening or conflicting with local resources.

6. Sustainability : a service that is dependable and won't collapse when demand shifts or local priorities shift. 

 

After spending most of a decade supporting NHS innovation and national Accelerators, I know that these goals are challenging even with huge budgets and 12 months of well-resourced service change. 

Delivering a standardised mental health support package to NHS staff, meeting the above principles, is extremely challenging - and CCGs will need innovation help.

 

Project5 has been designed to support this process - to accelerate the implementation and delivery of high governance and quality improvement service provision to the NHS team. By partnering with a CCG, we can essentially act as an accelerator - providing not only service delivery, but also the insight needed to adapt and blueprint what works regionally across your fragmented resources.

Our volunteer base meets a pre-mental health need and focuses on wellbeing and early support - not in conflict with most regional OH / EAP programmes, but in response to a gap that will likely inflate as pressure mounts. This is an important message to flag up - this model does not seek to replace the existing offer, rather to inflate it and support rapid delivery. But beyond this, to capture what worked, what needs were unmet, and to feed this information back to you. 

You can name this your [CCG] Staff Wellbeing Accelerator in Partnership with Project5. I don't want this to feel like selling a car, so I will stop here - but the politics is something we understand and so I am demonstrating how we can flex to support those concerns.

 

Project5 is essentially a service to accelerate regional wellbeing impact, utilising existing resources and plugging gaps if any exist - or appear later. 

Here's how Project5 can support a CCG / Trust wellbeing service:

PACE

The platform has been built to spec at pace and will be providing a national access model, akin to online-consultation with video provision, to staff in the near future (v2). This will include: 

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• mental health practitioner onboarding (including CPD relevant to their status)

• a  booking system for practitioners (volunteers or CCG staff) and NHS staff, providing an effortless ability to edit availability

• a triage system linking NHS staff to provision (either our team or local NHS provision) or social prescribing to other regional offers - bespoke to each CCG that partners.

• embedded evaluation measures for all users (practitioners, supervisors and NHS staff)

• a supervision booking system for practitioners.

• self-help platform for NHS staff (signposted via triage)

• suicide/self-harm resources for NHS staff (signposted via triage)

 

QUALITY

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Our governance model means that you inherit the oversight, evidence-base, quality improvement model and feedback system to support your services:

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• Governance: Project5 has a Clinical Governance Committee (9 members, all senior Clinicians / Academics in mental health) who critique the model against evidence, values, and NHS standards.

• Research: Project5 is partnered with the Exeter University Clinical Psychology Programme and includes a service evaluation committee with 8 members - delivering an evidence-based approach to effectiveness evaluation and quality improvement, at pace.

• User involvement: the project includes a stakeholder group with charity, sector, and NHS staff members - guiding the values and delivery of the project.

• Partners - Project5 is partnered with the NHSE Wellbeing taskforce and numerous other leading bodies and charities.

• Project5 is a Not-for-Profit enterprise, investing back into its goals.

• Project5's governance model is supported by the ability to train and retrain staff at pace and to collect 'sign-off' that this update has been done and the evidence will be considered in practice.

 

SCALABILITY

 

Project5's scalability is technology and admin dependent, which means that scalability is not an issue. The service delivery arm is built using scalable technology and service provision, at NHS security standards. 

With CCG partnering, we can accelerate the scalability of regional offers from static teams (such as NHS Trusts) to be regionally viable (to Primary Care etc). This can be via the scaling up of standards and training, through to empowering clinicians to onboard their availability into the preferred triage access model - thus making service delivery instant and independent of a third-party admin process.

ACCESSIBILITY

 

Project5 is already working to ensure that the platform is very accessible to users with varying access to technology - including the messaging and communications routes. With the support of the 3rd sector and NHS comms, we hope to reach a large sector of need.

Providing a triage model and an NHS independent option is central to the model - for early intervention work, as it is perceived that staff may sometimes not want to identify with a mental health route or disclose to colleagues in their own region. Providing choice, to this effect, is imperative.

SPREADABILITY

Spreadability is dependent on added value and ease of adoption.

Innovation design and spread is our focus and also our expertise.

We are not precious about how we have done this, open to learning at pace - we see each CCG relationship as an opportunity to co-create the onboarding model that best fits the culture and needs of that region.

SUSTAINABILITY

 

Project5 aims to survive independent of NHS relationships and has funders connecting with us, who share this aim. The value of independent support for Staff is highlighted as a need in the OH sector and is a core aim of the project. 

Towards this, we are working to develop NHS remote placements and training opportunities for mental health trainees and volunteer options for retired mental health practitioners - creating well-supported routes that don't tap into the existing capacity. These can be made available for your trainees, as a local resource - with the confidence that their work is within a governed model.

CCG partnering is an opportunity for CCG's to add robust governance, research and PPI arm to their delivery to build in sustainability into local models - which is perhaps the biggest risk to local designs without a rapid redevelopment, feedback and delivery method.

CCGs - JOIN US NOW

 

Project5, we hope, is seen as a means for a CCG to really activate its potential and partner with an organisation - led by NHS trained mental health clinicians - who want to meet the sudden need with a fully developed service response.

If you are a CCG commissioning/partner lead - interested in exploring Project5 as an accelerator partner. 
Please contact us at info@project5.org with the subject line - "Accelerator"

Thanks for your time :)

Dr Craig Newman
Project5, CEO

Clinical Psychologist