HEALTH leaders appeared before a committee of councillors this week to discuss the pressures facing NHS mental health services in Cumbria, including struggles to retain staff while caseloads rise.
Representatives of Cumbria, Northumberland, Tyne and Wear NHS Foundation Trust attended the Cumbria Health Scrutiny meeting to update councillors on their work.
CNTW manages facilities several wards at Carleton Clinic in Carlisle and Yewdale ward at West Cumberland Hospital.
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And councillors heard that CNTW’s mental health services are experiencing a period of significant demand since lockdown restrictions were lifted.
Group director David Muir said: “The number of referrals has increased and continues to increase.”
Slides were shown to the committee which show the increase in referrals and caseloads since the reopening of society after lockdown.
Referrals across the board remained steady in 2019 never topping the 1,000 mark, a steep drop-off was seen in 2020 when the nation went into lockdown. From mid-2020 onwards, referrals have steadily climbed reaching the 3,000 mark in 2021.
Mr Muir said: “The areas where there’s been particular increases is our children’s services, caseloads have gone up by about 50 per cent.”
The service responsible for children with ADHD has seen a particular increase in demand.
Crisis services are seeing the most concerning rise in demand.
Mr Muir said: “The demand on crisis services has increased, particularly through those pandemic years, where we’re at currently, we’re effectively receiving twice as many calls or referrals to our crisis line as we did.”
The group director said that teams have done “a really good job in keeping that demand fairly static so we don’t let it run out of control.”
Beds are under “a significant amount of pressure” running at 100 per cent occupancy or close.
It comes during a difficult period for recruitment and retention at the trust.
“We are using temporary staff from agencies and that does have an impact on costs.”
“This isn’t unique to Cumbria it’s reflected in other parts of the country in terms of the amount of vacancies on the national footprint.”
However, Mr Muir said that two cohorts of international nurses have been recruited to the trust recently.
He added that a trust-wide initiative to train health care assistants into fully-fledged nurses has been “a real success story.”
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