Mental health survey highlights concerns over waiting times for treatment in Hartlepool

As part of its investigation into the provision of preventative mental health services in the town the Hartlepool Borough Council audit and governance committee agreed to carry out a survey into services.

The survey ran from December 21 last year to January 31, 2019 and 95 services users and 10 providers responded.

Councillors said findings over the lack of signposting to services available, such as at community hubs, as well as long wait times, were concerning.

However they added they hoped the responses would be helpful in shaping the service and to make improvements going forward.

Coun Brenda Loynes pointed to a response from one person who said it took eight years for them to receive appropriate help.

She said: “When an instance has taken eight years, yes eight years, to get sorted that is totally unacceptable.

“Hopefully highlighting things here means we will see an improvement within different agencies in the future.”

Coun Ged Hall added: “I’m very concerned about mental health issues and stress on workers at the moment, we’ve got a lot of employees in Hartlepool on Universal Credit, it’s adding another stress on families.”

Other issues highlighted in the survey were the ease of access to information for people, including on social media and the council community hubs, with the majority of people reaching out to GPs first.

The council has three community hubs in the town, North, South and Central, which aim to offer support and services from a range of different organisations to make it easier for residents to access the help they need.

Coun Lesley Hamilton said: “Many employees are frightened to come forward because of certain fears around job losses and redundancies and that it would be held against them.

“My biggest concern is about the people not accessing those hubs.

“Those hubs were put in place to try and get the community accessing those services.

“I don’t know how we do that and get people to access that but it’s a service and it’s there to provide support.  If people aren’t accessing that we need to know why, it’s an expensive service.

Coun John Tennant said: “Signposting is one of the major issues.

“I think social media is one of the major shortcomings in terms of this service as a whole.”

The need to focus on community hubs and making people aware of the services on offer were also raised by Joan Stevens, statutory scrutiny manager at the council, who presented the results to the committee.

Nic Marko , Local Democracy Reporting Service