In what is believed to be a sector-first, last year Elysium Healthcare proudly launched two sets of care and treatment standards for its CYPMHS services which were fully co-produced with patients and their families and carers. These were the latest in a series of innovative co-produced initiatives being developed across Elysium as examples of ‘Working Together’.
We spoke with Regional CYPMHS Quality Manager Colleen Fahy to find out more about the standards and what the plans are for Working Together moving forward. 
“We launched the Standards on September 18th last year but work on developing them really began back in 2023. That was when we launched co-production across our CYPMHS and other services. What we wanted to do was to get parents and carers, service users, experts by experience, staff and NHS commissioners and family to start thinking about working together. We wanted them to consider what areas were important to them, where good practice could be shared and what we needed to improve on.
“Working together, we developed a project to create the Care and Treatment Standards Service Users and the Treatment Standards for Service Users and Families and Carers, which we collectively as an organisation pledged to strive to meet at all times.
“Since then, work has continued. Beginning with the pre-admission phase, we are 
benchmarking our services against the standards and examining closely what we can do to adapt, working with the clinical network, to meet the Service Users and families’ recommendations and requirements at the pre-admission phase. The clinical network will then look at how we take that forward, a process that families, carers and service users, as well as colleagues, will be involved in.
“One of those options being explored is creating an ‘ambassador’, or ‘mentor’ or ‘peer support’, which is being developed by young people supported at Potters Bar by the Provider Collaborative’s expert by experience and lead Psychologist. The role would be for the “peer worker” to be there and act as someone who is in the pre-admission phase, someone they can reach out to for support, if they are admitted to hospital. We’re also looking to revamp our welcome packs so they are more streamlined and focused for service users and families before admission.
“Elsewhere, the co-production work, or ‘Working Together’ doesn’t stop. There’s so much enthusiasm right across our services to work collaboratively together with service users, families, colleagues and others.
“And to celebrate and recognise all that hard work, we’re planning our first Working Together Better Together Awards Ceremony which will be held on November 22nd in Elstree.
“Service users, families and carer representatives and colleagues will all be in attendance and we’re launching the awards this month, which is very exciting! We’ll be looking for people to nominate across 12 Working Together categories covering a wide scope but which focus on the impact the innovation and work has had and how they involved service users, carers and others in that piece of work – as well as how it has been embedded into every day practice, while still involving service users, families and carers.
“It will be a real opportunity to celebrate the wonderful examples of working together and its impact across Elysium. There’ll be interactive games, centre-piece design and creation and lots of fun.”