Gathering views: Mental Health Day Service Provision in Islington

In 2017, as part of commissioning the mental health services, the council asked Healthwatch to gather the feedback of service users on current provision with the aim of engaging residents in the development of a service specification, and train residents and service users to be part of a panel to select a service provider.

Healthwatch Islington spoke to 101 service users across the three services; Mind Spa, Mind Hub and Mind Empower. These services were first visited by HW in 2016. To gather the views of non-service users HW also approached two local groups; Islington Borough User Group (iBUG) and Hillside Clubhouse. Both work with mental health service users.

With Many respondents already experiencing anxiety, depression and similar conditions, the idea of potential further reduction to the services was making them even more anxious and worried.

Of those interviewed 51% were men and 49% women; 61% were among the ages of 25-64 and only 9% were above the age of 65.

The report found that of the 83 service users who were asked which local services they use, 70 explained that they use multiple local mental health services with some venues preferred to others due to location or the building environment. Respondents said that “with mental health, any time is important” hence services should be open for longer. Over 50% respondents said they would not be willing to or able to travel to another centre for more convenient opening times.

Respondents felt that the current flexibility needs to be retained, particularly in terms of the following specifications: open access to the service not just referrals, activities led by staff and service users, affordable food being available, a diversity of venues and identities for each of those venues. With 34 out of the 101 saying they were happy to make donations; it is important that the service is commissioned to be free. It is important that future changes are clearly communicated to the users to avoid distress over losing that familiarity.

Healthwatch planned to host a meeting of service users and the commissioner for mental health to work on the draft specification and ensured that findings from this report will be fed into that process.