If you already receive support for your mental health from a community mental health team or another provider, this information may be useful to you.
If you receive support from a community mental health team (Kent and Medway Social Care Partnership Trust – KMPT), the team you are working with will not change any of your care without speaking to you and agreeing it first.
Mental Health Together is a new name for Community Mental Health Services in Kent and Medway.
It improves the speed of support for people who have complex mental health needs – these are people that often need more help than talking therapies, but do not need very specialist support offered by secondary care services (KMPT).
Mental Health Together provides a broader range of ways to help people manage their mental health, which includes access to services that can support them with other things in their life that might be impacting how they are feeling – like employment, housing or money worries.
Mental Health Together joins up a range of different services that can help someone who is finding it difficult to manage their mental health, so they get support from one place. As it is a new NHS service it means there will be more support available and people won’t have to wait as long for the care they need.
People who are looking for more specialist mental health support, may see a ‘Mental Health Together’ logo on letters they receive about their mental health care.
As this is an entirely new service, we are testing it first in Thanet from 15 January 2024. This will ensure that all our planning is effective and everything is running smoothly on a smaller scale. Most importantly, it will ensure the new support on offer is providing the best care to the people who need it.
Other parts of Kent and Medway will be offering the new service by the end of April 2024.
You do not need to do anything. If you are an existing patient, your team will contact you to discuss any changes to your care.
If you are already receiving support for your mental health from a community team, then your existing care plan will be reviewed as the new service becomes available. Your team will contact you if they think any of the new support from Mental Health Together is suitable.
Mental Health Together assesses patients in a new way and this means the support that is offered will be shaped collaboratively by patients and their healthcare team. These assessments will look at all parts of someone’s life that might be impacting their mental health, so care plans may be made up of various types of support that is much more personalised.
No. This background information and any personal circumstances you want to share will be noted during your assessment when you first access support from Mental Health Together. Importantly, this story will be shared with the necessary teams throughout the care you receive from Mental Health Together. We know sharing this information can often be difficult for some people so we will only ask you once.
No. A GP can refer to the service, but someone can also access support from Mental Health Together via other mental health providers (Porchlight, Live Well Kent and Medway, Shaw Trust, Invicta Health).
Outside of business hours, contact Kent and Medway Mental Health Crisis Line by calling 111 Option 2.
If you are currently under the care of a Community Mental Health Team (CMHT), contact your team Monday to Friday between 9am and 5pm.
If you are under the care of Home Treatment Teams (HTT), you can contact your team between 8am and 9pm, 7 days a week.
If your friend/relative is currently under the care of a community team from Kent and Medway Social Care Partnership Trust (KMPT), contact them Monday to Friday between 9am and 5pm.
If they are under the care of a Home Treatment Teams (HTT) from Kent and Medway Social Care Partnership Trust (KMPT), you can contact this team between 8am and 9pm, 7 days a week.
If you need urgent help outside of business hours, contact Kent and Medway Mental Health Crisis Line by calling 111 Option 2.
Alternatively, speak to their GP.
Yes. This service is available to people who have serious mental illness and who may already be under the care of a Community Mental Health team.
During your assessment, the team will discuss other available support that might be right for you. As we know our mental health can be impacted by lots of other things that you may also need support with, this could be support for employment or housing difficulties.
If you need help with medication that relates to your mental health, you should contact your team to discuss this. Alternatively, your GP can support with broader medication advice and information.
Yes. The Mental Health Together team will share information about your ongoing care with your GP when appropriate.
Taking medication is a personal choice and is just one way in which people receive help for their mental health. Sometimes medication can be helpful and sometimes not. The pros and cons of medication will be discussed with you by a doctor or trained medication prescriber.
No. You can access support from Mental Health Together for as long as you need. Some of the packages of support you may be offered will have a set number of sessions, but your care will always be reviewed to see if the support has helped you or if there are other ways we can support you.
This service has been created by working closely with people who have experience of mental health services. They have told us what parts of mental health support have been ineffective and ways we needed to improve. As this service is new in 2023, we will continue to look at how things are going and if we need adjust things. If you would like to share your experience, please contact livedexperience