Introduction to the Surrey Adult Mental Health Alliance and Advisory Forum

The Surrey Adult Mental Health Alliance exists to improve mental health support and services for people in Surrey.

Organisations have come together to work with each other and people with lived experience. Partnership working increases capacity and capability whilst reducing rivalry between service providers. This enables Surrey to focus more on what our residents need and who is truly best to meet that need.

National and local changes that influenced the decision to create an alliance:

• White Paper (February 2021): Integration and Innovation: Working Together to Improve Health & Social Care for All
• Emerging Surrey Heartlands Integrated Care System (ICS)
• National increase in mental health needs, adding pressure to limited resources for service provision
• Surrey’s Mental Health Improvement Plan
• Surrey Health & Wellbeing Strategy

Other influential factors:

• Recognition that people are falling into gaps between services and being bounced around.
• Pathways to care can be complex and difficult to navigate.
• Solutions delivered by individual providers can’t always solve the entirety of the problem.

To build lived experience insight into the work taking place, the Alliance has an Advisory Forum whose members currently access or have accessed services in the past through an Alliance member organisation. In 2023, Advisory Forum meetings will be held during April, June, October, and December with possible additional workshops throughout the year.

The Advisory Forum members vote two representatives to become Alliance Board members. These representatives work with Advisory Forum members and sit on the Board to immerse the lived experience voice and wider feedback into all discussions. For the 2022/23 term, the Advisory Forum Board Representatives are Collette Davies (from the Mary Frances Trust Advisory Group) and Megan Siarey (from the Independent Mental Health Network). The term runs from November 2022 to October 2023.

To carry out the work that needs to happen before the Alliance is formally launched, a Shadow Board for the Alliance has been set up. Once everything is in place, the Board will be agreed, and it will lose the ‘shadow’ aspect. The Shadow Board consists of 10 voting members and 2 non-voting members.

Current Alliance Membership (this is an active and growing list)

Catalyst, Centre of Psychology, Dorking Healthcare, Mary Frances Trust, Surrey and Borders Partnership NHS Foundation Trust (SABP), Surrey Coalition of Disabled People, Surrey County Council, Surrey Independent Mental Health Network (IMHN), We Are With You.

How to get involved

Advisory Forum membership is open to those who access or have accessed mental health services via an Adult Mental Health Alliance member (see list above). If you would like to contribute your experience to help inform the Alliance’s work, contact Megan Siarey, Advisory Forum Coordinator at Megan.Siarey@SurreyCoalition.org.uk or register your interest via the IMHN sign-up form.