Title: Health Place: a new platform for Integrated Mental Health Care
Funder: Department of Health and Social Care

Abstract: Health Place: a platform for integrated mental health care for children and young people Over eight months from January 2022, a partnership of CNWL NHS Trust, Health Place and Imperial College, supported by a panel of expert users and a staff team of four young people will further develop, test and evaluate a new support assistant (online tool) for children and young people with mental health problems. 2021 has seen a doubling in referrals for mental health support for children and young people. 3-4 month waiting times are now commonplace, with an increasing number of young people failing to access any support. The vision for this project is that every young person on a waiting list should have access to support that is safe and appropriate, without delay. We will help activate 250 young people to achieve goals and actions prioritised by them, by developing their cognitive skills and behaviours (Capability), streamlining access to support (Opportunity), and through peer-to-peer sharing of content (Motivation). By these means, participating in Health Place will increase individual confidence in self-care, improve well-being and contribute to improved clinical outcomes. The Health Place platform is distinctive and innovative in respect of its powerful recommendation engine that guides users along tailored support pathways, the breadth and flexibility of the support on offer, and the multiple conversational support feedback loops between the platform, the users and clinicians, that allows the platform to learn and improve with the collective intelligence of its users. This functionality enables a truly personalised focus on what a young person wants to do next: their priorities, their voice and their agency. The platform is designed and built with technologies that are capable of reaching thousands of young people on waiting lists with an ultra-low unit cost (&pound;0.22 per young person), by optimizing the use of all the relevant support resources and capabilities in a local area, across both clinical and non-clinical support pathways - hence the name Health Place . NIHR funding will result in a mature system that can be scaled to other Integrated Care Systems, with a particular focus on support and reducing waiting lists for support. Evaluation by Imperial College will track a cohort of users of the enhanced Health Place solution and compare experience and outcomes to a synthetic cohort of CNWL s age matched patients. Imperial will deliver an objective evaluation of the benefits of the service from both patient and NHS perspectives and provide an indicative business case that we hope will encourage wider adoption.

Lay abstract: Health Place: a platform for integrated mental health care for children and young people Over eight months from January 2022, a partnership of CNWL NHS Trust, Health Place and Imperial College, supported by a panel of expert users and a staff team of four young people will further develop, test and evaluate a new support assistant (online tool) for children and young people with mental health problems. 2021 has seen a doubling in referrals for mental health support for children and young people. 3-4 month waiting times are now commonplace, with an increasing number of young people failing to access any support. The vision for this project is that every young person on a waiting list should have access to support that is safe and appropriate, without delay. We will help activate 250 young people to achieve goals and actions prioritised by them, by developing their cognitive skills and behaviours (Capability), streamlining access to support (Opportunity), and through peer-to-peer sharing of content (Motivation). By these means, participating in Health Place will increase individual confidence in self-care, improve well-being and contribute to improved clinical outcomes. The Health Place platform is distinctive and innovative in respect of its powerful recommendation engine that guides users along tailored support pathways, the breadth and flexibility of the support on offer, and the multiple conversational support feedback loops between the platform, the users and clinicians, that allows the platform to learn and improve with the collective intelligence of its users. This functionality enables a truly personalised focus on what a young person wants to do next: their priorities, their voice and their agency. The platform is designed and built with technologies that are capable of reaching thousands of young people on waiting lists with an ultra-low unit cost (&pound;0.22 per young person), by optimizing the use of all the relevant support resources and capabilities in a local area, across both clinical and non-clinical support pathways - hence the name Health Place . NIHR funding will result in a mature system that can be scaled to other Integrated Care Systems, with a particular focus on support and reducing waiting lists for support. Evaluation by Imperial College will track a cohort of users of the enhanced Health Place solution and compare experience and outcomes to a synthetic cohort of CNWL s age matched patients. Imperial will deliver an objective evaluation of the benefits of the service from both patient and NHS perspectives and provide an indicative business case that we hope will encourage wider adoption.

Research activity codes: 8.1 ORGANISATION AND DELIVERY OF SERVICES
Health categories: MENTAL HEALTH