MENTAL health experts have won a national accolade for ‘exemplary’ and ‘complex’ work helping Coventry patients being cared for in specialist facilities out of the area.
Staff at Coventry and Warwickshire Partnership NHS Trust have been working for four years on a project to help visit people receiving care away from their home city.
With NHS Arden and Great East Midlands Commissioning Support Unit, they have won the value and improvement in mental health category at the prestigious Health Service Journal – Value in Healthcare Awards 2015.
The ‘coming home’ project involved partnership working with local authorities, providers and commissioners to repatriate 134 patients within its first three years.
Judges said: “The work being done here is exemplary and sustainable, in a complex area with often challenging patients.”
One patient, who moved back to Coventry from a placement in the north east, said: “I am much closer to my family, I am able to get to see my dad every week, and I now have my own place. So yes, I am feeling much better.”
