Andrew, Jo and Ruth attended the DSN Partnership Board on 26 th March 2026 with 2 amazing people with lived experience, Julie and Simon. They both told their stories and explained what struggles they have in the community. Andrew and Jo also gave feedback they had received from some of the groups they had attended.  The board listened to the feedback, and the members took this on board and also explained the services that are available. There was a presentation from Assist, who support the...

The last few weeks the team have been around the County visiting some of the Locality Forums that Support Staffordshire hold. We have found them interesting and we've made some good contacts that we can use in future projects for the board. We took Becky our manager along to one of the meetings so she could experience it and she found it really interesting and came back to the office with loads of new ideas, so who knows what will happen!..... watch this space!

On 24 th February Jo spoke with some of the patients at Ballington House about mental health and what their issues were when trying to access the community teams.   One patient told Jo that they had attended multiple GP appointments expressing how low their mood was and asked for extra support. They said that each time, the GP would tell them they would have to wait for the referral process even though they said they were in crisis. No other support numbers were given to them.   Another...