Highlights from 2023 and plans for a big year ahead….

It has been a busy and exciting year of activity for South London Listens, as we continue to deliver against the pledges made in partnership with south london communities to prevent mental ill-health and promote recovery. This culminated in an important listening campaign and further commitments to action from NHS and local authority leaders at two major community assemblies.

As we get to work on our plans for delivering on renewed community priorities in 2024, we thought we’d share a few highlights of 2023.

63 Bell Well organisation launched - working with their communities to take action on mental health

Over 60 organisations and hundreds of community leaders are involved in our Be Well programme – and our evaluation has shown that they’re engaging with thousands of people regularly to take action on mental health. This year we have really focused on how we can reach new communities and organisations. In Sutton, with leadership from the Council. In Lewisham, with Goldsmiths University, we’re supporting the co-design of a free wellbeing clinic providing therapy, especially for racially and religiously minoritized people. We’ve also worked with Spanish speaking organisations, translating and delivering our Be Well mental health and organising training. Watch out early in 2024 for our evaluation report with the Centre for Society and Mental Health – with a sneak peak in this blog.

New support for young people and their parents on the CAMHS waiting list

This year, we were delighted to be able to launch our CAMHS virtual waiting room, developed in partnership with communities through MyHealthE by our amazing colleagues at the CAMHS digital lab. This has been rolled out across Croydon, Lambeth, Lewisham, and Southwark – with great coverage in the press. Over 7,500 families now have access to this service through MyHealthE, which includes new video content and resources curated by CAMHS clinicians to provide information whilst on the wait list and signposting to additional services e.g. KOOTH. Through the South London Partnership, work is taking place to explore how this can be developed across south London – and in November, the three Mental Health Trusts in south London pledged to go even further in improving engagement for young people and parents on the CAMHS waiting list.

Real progress on living wage accreditation – and commitments to more

Since 2021, we’ve been championing the importance of good work and fair wages on mental health. We’re delighted that amazing progress has been made across south London – with seven NHS trusts now Living Wage accredit. This year Merton and Wandsworth Councils also became accredited. At our Assemblies in November, both ICBs publicly committed to going further to become living wage systems – and exploring the importance of living hours. This work has already lifted the wages of thousands of people – and has the potential to help many, many more.

240 South London GP surgeries now signed up as  ‘safe surgeries’ for migrant and refugee communities

We’ve been working with community leaders to champion and drive the Safe Surgeries initiative across south London, supporting GP practices to take steps to tackle the barriers faced by many migrants in accessing healthcare. Since Nov 21, we've seen a 100% increase in surgeries signed up – with a total of 240 now registered. But importantly, this year we secured new commitments from SWL and SEL ICB to improve implementation of the programme - with 80 practices signing up to new training held in May 2023.

Helping communities access mental health care for the first time

Our three Community Embedded Workers in Lambeth, Lewisham, and Southwark, have worked within five community organisations through 2023 to pilot an innovative way of increasing access to mental health help for refugee, migrant, and diaspora communities. They have been delivering 1-2-1 and group advice sessions, supporting people with referrals to mental health services, developing culturally relevant material and resources and helping existing staff to provide low-level support through training so that the benefits of the work can be maintained at a local level. This work has included a mental health advocacy workshop with over 65 undocumented migrants in Lambeth. In Lewisham, our CEW has worked with local IAPT services to develop a pathway for 30 clients to access IAPT and relevant mental health services for the first time.

Continuing to listen to what matters to our community

And this summer we embarked on a new listening campaign – to build on what we’ve learnt and prioritised so far. Through our amazing Be Well organisations, and across our partners, across south London boroughs, we listened to 4,124 people! We then worked with leaders to understand the issues in more detail and co-develop a range of pledges for action.

Recommitting to action as a partnership

In November, we held two Community Assemblies – in south east and south west London. Over 700 people attended two Community Health Assemblies, held in south east and south west London. They were incredible events, showcasing stories from our listening, performances, and a new set of co-produced pledges for action for our programme.  Most importantly, there were 11 NHS leaders on stage recommitting to taking action on the issue heard - you can read the pledges here.

Next year, we’ll be bringing together all of our work over the past two years in a new South London Listens impact report. And importantly, alongside this we’ll be setting out our plans to deliver on all of the pledges made.

Finally…

We want to say a huge thanks to everyone who has been involved. NONE of this would have been possible without the members of the community giving their time and energy to build this partnership. We held over nine powerful community events this year involving hundreds of people. And we’re hugely grateful to our Taskforce – and the community, NHS and Local Authority leaders who have met monthly to drive our work forward – giving hours and hours of their time to help us build this incredible partnership.

We look forward to working with all of you more in 2024