Mental Health

What is the Mental Health Safety Improvement Programme?

The Mental Health Safety Improvement Programme (MHSIP) is a national programme aimed at improving the safety and outcomes of mental health care by reducing unwarranted variation and providing a high-quality healthcare experience for all people across the system by March 2024.

The programme has three workstreams:

• Reduce suicide and deliberate self-harm in inpatient mental health services, the healthcare workforce and non-mental health acute settings
• Reduce restrictive practice in inpatient mental health and learning disability services
• Improve sexual safety in inpatient mental health and learning disability services.

You can see a driver diagram for the MHSIP workstream here. 

How are we going to support delivery of the MHSIP?

We are excited to be working with mental health colleagues across Kent, Surrey and Sussex (KSS) to develop a Patient Safety Network aimed at:

• Working together: linking people with lived experience, teams and leaders to deliver the MHSIP workstreams.
• Building improvement capability in mental health teams across the network.
• Sharing learning, support improvements and safe cultures.

How will we optimise Quality Improvement Opportunities?

To enhance our local network we have joined the South of England Mental Health Quality and Patient Safety Improvement Collaborative (MHC). The Collaborative supports individuals, teams and organisations to build skills and knowledge about quality and safety improvement, creates space and time to work on safety issues, and provides opportunities to continually learn from each other. This will provide a regional forum for support, learning and sharing for the KSS MH Patient Safety Network. Together we are working with the Quality Coaches from the National Collaborating Centre for Mental Health (NCCMH).

Interested in learning more?

Kerry Dudley is leading on the MHSIP for the KSS Patient Safety Collaborative. She would be happy to provide further information or have a chat about the programme – kerry.dudley5@nhs.net.