CLEAR Mental Health 2022/23

Innovation and training in mental health redesign in NHS North West and South West

Health Education England is offering support to local projects that help to develop the mental health workforce for 2022/23. This is a unique opportunity for organisations across the North West and South West regions.

The below information describes the opportunity in more detail and how CLEAR can support mental health services to accelerate initiatives, develop your workforce and improve outcomes for patients.

How CLEAR will develop Mental Health transformation in your region

Improving Mental Health services is a national priority highlighted in the NHS Long Term Plan and expanded on in The Five Year Forward View for Mental Health. Community Mental Health Teams (CMHTs) are a key component of national policy for integrated service delivery, but organisational challenges exist in reaching the outlined goals. To support organisations to reach these goals, Health Education England has supported the delivery of 4 CLEAR Mental Health projects in Adult Severe Mental Illnesses (SMI) Community Care.

What’s needed from you

The following lists the main requirements for each CLEAR project:

  • Organisation leadership from your executive or board level to help guide and align project goals to organisational strategy
  • Directorate leadership, we ask for a senior clinician working in the department to work with us 1 day a week to support the project team
  • Available staff, up to 3 clinical associates to join the CLEAR programme on secondment for 2.5 days a week for 6 months Associates will receive full training and supervision from the National CLEAR Faculty with support from your organisation’s IT, HR, Finance, and administrative team
  • Collaboration from various departments at your trust to enable data extraction and analysis (IG, IT/BI, HR and Finance)
  • A commitment to support the project with collaboration across your organisation including dedicated administrative and communications support for the project
individuals

Attend a webinar to find out more 

The CLEAR team with both regions of Health Education England will be hosting two dedicated webinar sessions for the North West and South West regions. These webinars are aimed at organisations considering taking part in CLEAR Mental Health, where members of the CLEAR Faculty will talk through the opportunity in more detail and will allow you to ask any questions relating to your expression of interest.

  • North West – Thursday 20 January 2022, 1 pm – 2 pm
  • South West – Thursday 13 January 2022, 11am – 12pm

You can sign up to either webinar by emailing clear.team@hee.nhs.uk. If you cannot make the times listed, please contact the CLEAR team to arrange an alternative.

More detailed information is outlined in the below PDF documents. If you would like this information in another format or are having trouble accessing these documents, please contact a member of the CLEAR team by emailing clear.team@hee.nhs.uk

Part 1 – Introduction to CLEAR  and the opportunity

This document explains what CLEAR is and how the programme can support mental health services in your region.

This document is split into two parts, Part A is a general outline of CLEAR and Part B goes into more detail of the system wide mental health transformation proposal Part B will also include an invitation to attend a webinar and the next steps required to take advantage of the region’s offer to support your participation in the National CLEAR Programme.

Part 2 – Invitation to submit an Expression of Interest (EOI)

This document explains how to submit an expression of interest for these exciting projects. It also contains a detailed breakdown of what will be required from certain roles within your organisation including an Executive Sponsor, Clinical Lead, IG Lead and IT/BI Lead.

This document also includes frequently asked questions (FAQs) for any queries that you may have about the process and the CLEAR programme as well as a dedicated FAQ section for potential CLEAR Associates.

Submitting an expression of interest

To ensure the utmost success of outcomes and clinical and executive buy in for projects, the project requires an understanding from certain roles/teams within your organisation. Please ensure you and other relevant colleagues take the time to understand the requirement from project sites ahead of completing an expression of interest for CLEAR Mental Health 2022/23.

More detail on the requirement for each role as we well as teams such as communications and quality improvement teams, can be found in the Part 2 of the proposal.

To submit an expression of interest, the Executive Sponsor, Clinical Lead, IG Lead and BI Lead for the project will need to complete a form which can be accessed using the toggles on the right.

All four forms from each sponsor will need to be completed by Monday 31 January 2022 in order for your organisation to be considered for CLEAR Mental Health 2022/23.

If you are experiencing any issues submitting an expression of interest or have any questions, please email clear.team@hee.nhs.uk.

Each project site requires an Executive Sponsor who champions the project within the trust. For the programme to be a success at your site, we would require the executive sponsor’s active support in:

  • Identifying the correct individuals within your trust to engage with the project, including the leads for the clinical area, information governance and business intelligence;
  • Prioritising this work to ensure that it achieves timelines;
  • Aligning the CLEAR project goals and objectives with organisational strategy;
  • Communication of this work to the executive board to ensure its impact; and
  • Approving the backfill and protected time for participants to perform the education and delivery of the project

If you are the agreed Executive Sponsor for the project, you will need to complete Part A of the EOI using the link below. This will make up 1 of 4 parts to the EOI.

EOI Part A – Executive sponsor to complete

Each project site requires a clinical sponsor who champions the project within the chosen area. This role requires a time commitment of 8 hours per week for the duration of delivery. There are often individuals who are important to the project but who do not have this available time to contribute. The programme considers these individuals to be key stakeholders who are kept in touch with the progress of the project without the time commitment.

For the programme to be a success at your site, we require the clinical lead for your chosen area to actively support in:

  • Identifying a senior clinician to become the clinical sponsor of the project;
  • Outlining the key stakeholders for the project;
  • Supporting the recruitment of local clinicians to become CLEAR associates for the duration of the on-the-ground delivery of the project; and
  • Promoting the project within their clinical area and trust.

If you are the agreed Clinical Lead for the project you will need to complete Part B of the EOI using the link below. This will make up 1 of 4 parts to the EOI.

EOI Part B – Lead for clinical area to complete

CLEAR projects will use data from your organisation that is:

  • collected directly from your workforce
  • shared from your information assets and systems, including patient administration systems or equivalents.

Individuals contained in the data shared by the trust are not identified: no names, NHS numbers, dates of birth, unstructured data, or places of residence are shared.

For the programme to be a success at your site, we would require active support from all key information governance roles to:

  • Review and agree the information governance documentation in line with project timelines.

If you are the agreed IG Lead for the project you will need to complete Part C of the EOI using the link below. This will make up 1 of 4 parts to the EOI.

EOI Part C – Lead for Information Governance to complete

We request workforce data from a combination of electronic staff record (ESR) and finance data. This describes the workforce that delivers care by whole time equivalent (WTE) per role and outlines the monthly spend for substantive, bank and agency requirement. The workforce data provides an important baseline understanding of the workforce available within the organisation to deliver care for patients.

For the programme to be a success at your site, we would require the lead for BI’s active support in:

  • Identifying a designated contact within the BI team to take responsibility for scheduling and prioritising the planned work, receiving the data specification, extracting and sending the financial, workforce and patient activity data to 33n by the planned dates.

If you are the agreed BI Lead for the project you will need to complete Part D of the EOI using the link below. This will make up 1 of 4 parts to the EOI.

EOI Part D – Lead for Business Intelligence to complete

Dates Action required for CLEAR Mental Health 2022/23 projects
December 2021 Expression of interest application opens, and a series of webinars are offered to provide information and an opportunity for questions for each region. Find out more about how to submit an application on the CLEAR Mental Health page.
January 2022  Two new webinar dates are added for each region, sign up to a webinar by emailing clear.team@hee.nhs.uk 

  • South West – Thursday 13 January, 11am – 12pm
  • North West – Thursday 20 January, 1 – 2pm

Applications close for CLEAR Mental Health on Monday 31 January.
February Sites are shortlisted, preliminary meetings set up and launch dates agreed with sites.
March Project launch at shortlisted sites. Data sharing agreements, data extraction, participant recruitment take place during this stage.
August CLEAR Associates will begin the education programme, training and project delivery.
March 2023 Completion of projects and consideration of findings.

What CLEAR offers

Join the CLEAR
programme

Get in touch with us if you would like to discuss
a potential project and/or opportunities for your
clinical staff.