Funding for mental health engagement

Manchester’s Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCG’s) and Manchester City Council (MCC) are working together to redesign mental health and wellbeing services with an intention to commission new services from April 2015. Macc are helping them to co-ordinate their engagement with the voluntary and community sector which will take place from mid November 2013 for a 12 week period.

All the parties are committed to ensure that the voice of users and potential users of services plays a central role in the redesign of services and recognise the critical role that VCS organisations play in their roles as advocates for the people and communities that they work with. To facilitate this advocacy role Macc have been given funding to help VCS organisations to collect the voice of users and potential users of services. This funding is for the use of facilitators (from a panel of facilitators) and contribution to other costs such as venue hire, refreshments and other associated engagement costs. It is not sufficient to cover the internal staff costs of VCS organisations running engagement events.

The CCG’s and MCC have split the system into 5 areas. They are seeking feedback on some or all of the areas dependent on the reach of each VCS organisation.

In order to gauge the extent of potential requests for engagement support Macc is requesting that organisations fill in a simple and short Expression of Interest (EOI) form (attached). If we are oversubscribed, to ensure equitable use of the resources we will have to prioritise support for a mix of proposals which best cover the range of care pathways and the thematic and geographic communities of interest.

Once we have received expressions of interest, made decisions about which organisations can be supported we will contact you to discuss and agree the details.

Please return your EOI form by Friday 22 November 2013 to: [email protected]

If you have any questions about this process please contact John Butler at Macc, on 0161 834 9823, or email: [email protected]

There is a more detailed document (click here http://tinyurl.com/nnsoo82) which describes the underlying principles the commissioning intentions, the pathways and the outcomes; and information in plain English is also available on the CCG's Talking Health Website at: http://tinyurl.com/pw9fxb8  

A written engagement pack will be available following the official launch of the CCG’s and MCC engagement processes on 20 Wednesday 20 November from 10am to 12pm at Cross Street Chapel in Manchester city centre.

Refreshments will be served after the event, so whilst you are welcome to just drop in, though you are asked to confirm your attendance and let them know if you have any access or dietary requirements. You can do this by emailing [email protected] or calling Chris on 0161 765 4201. Please note that they are able to reimburse reasonable travel expenses by arrangement.

You can find more information about Cross Street Chapel and how to get there at: http://cross-street-chapel.org.uk/directions/