Hello and welcome to the May issue of The Triangle

This week we have been marking World Mental Health week across the Bath and North East Somerset, Swindon and Wiltshire Together Integrated Care System. Partner organisations and colleagues have been raising awareness about mental health as we continue to work together to create a society that prevents mental health problems from developing and protects everyone’s mental well-being.

Mental health problems are certainly an issue across our area. In Wiltshire, admissions to hospital for self-harm are the highest they have been for five years and, in Swindon, they are significantly higher than the average for the South West. In B&NES, hospital admissions due to eating disorders are also, sadly, higher than the national average.

In BSW we are working hard to improve access to mental health services, address inequalities in terms of mental health issues among our communities and tackle the growing number of mental health problems affecting our children and young people.

Mental health is something that BSW Together ICS is taking extremely seriously, and we have robust plans in place to address this which are outlined in our recently published Integrated Care Strategy. You can read more about this in this issue of The Triangle.

You can also read about some of the other important ways the health and care partners that make up our ICS have been working together to improve outcomes for local people,

You can find out how we are looking at ways to address environmental issues through reducing travel and journey times for families attending paediatric clinics. We also have some great new initiatives underway at hospitals across our region with the Great Western Hospital introducing a new scheme to support carers and the Royal United Hospital in Bath finding innovative ways to aid patient recovery and their journeys out of hospital.

Thanks once again for taking the time to read and, as always, please let us know what you think by emailing bswicb.partnership@nhs.net

Sue Harriman,

Chief Executive Officer, Bath and North East Somerset, Swindon and Wiltshire Integrated Care Board

Stephanie Elsy,

Chair, Bath and North East Somerset, Swindon and Wiltshire Integrated Care Board