Title: Lessons from the health and wellbeing response to the Grenfell Tower Fire: A multi-methods approach
Funder: Department of Health and Social Care

Abstract: Research Questions: How did statutory agencies decide on the content and structure of the mental health and wellbeing response to Grenfell? Why did they take the decisions they did? What novel approaches did they use? What were the outputs? How did they work together with voluntary sector providers and local residents to plan and develop it? Background: The Grenfell Tower fire in 2017 was one of the biggest post war disasters in the UK. Grenfell is a centred event, the main impact fell on a single socially linked community and health/social care system. Part of the response was a multiagency mental health and wellbeing response. The intention of the agencies was not only to treat mental health problems but also to provide wider wellbeing support to a community severely disrupted by the fire and its social and political fall-out. The response involved primary and secondary care NHS, local authority, national and local third sector providers and community members. This project is a contextualized case study addressing mainly the first two years to June 2019 spanning the emergency and early recovery phase. The response is of potential significance for planning for emergencies nationally and internationally, particularly for centred events. Given the challenges of planning and delivering the programme against such a complex background we will pay particular attention to those elements of the programme where innovation occurred and organisations had to go outside the constraints of normal business as usual practice and innovate to solve novel problems. Aims: To draw lessons from the Grenfell tower disaster and the mental health and wellbeing response to inform future planning and delivery of services for centred major incidents.Objectives To bring together information from a variety of evidence sources to build a clear picture of how the parties involved went about developing and delivering a multi-agency programme.. Methodology: Evaluative case study using triangulation of documentary evidence from the NHS and local authority, evidence from semi-structured interviews with key decision makers and other key informants, and quantitative data on activity, costs and outputs. Analysis of documents and interview transcipts will be carried out using a Framework Method approach. Work Plan: Months 1-3, setup, construct preliminary timeline, prepare framework; Months 4-9 gather quantitative and documentary evidence, interviews with key informants; Months 10-12 analysis; Months 13-14 prepare reports and publications and disseminate outputs . Dissemination: We expect to have an impact on disaster planning nationally and internationally. We will use a broad range of methods to communicate outputs including publication in peer reviewed journals, conference presentations, a study website, social media, written reports aimed at key stakeholders and the local community and other populations affected by Grenfell. We will carry out briefings and focussed meetings to present the results to all stakeholders. We will present the results in written and oral form to the Ministry of Communities Housing and Local Government, NHSE, HEE, PHE and NICE, the national IAPT programme, the Metropolitan Police and the police and other first responder organisations nationally and to professional bodies.,

Lay abstract: We aim to learn lessons from the mental health and wellbeing response to the Grenfell Tower fire of 2017. The fire, unlike most terrorist incidents (where most of the victims and witnesses don t know each other), was a &ldquo;centred&rdquo; event, it mainly affected a single closely knit community. Centred events are common worldwide and not uncommon in the UK. For instance flooding is a growing UK problem but other types do occur. Capturing the learning from Grenfell about major incidents generally and centred events specifically is very important. We expect the findings from the project to be important in informing planning in the UK and internationally. UK emergency planning guidance mainly covers the initial emergency response (weeks) after a major incident and there is much less advice about longer term (years) response and recovery activities. In order to plan and deliver the Grenfell response the NHS and local government had to work with third sector organisations and with the local community to find solutions for problems no-one had solved before, in the context of a particularly difficult political situation. How they went about trying to achieve that, what the barriers were and how they tried to overcome those barriers is an important element in the study. This study will pull together a wide range of information from those involved in planning, commissioning and delivering services, and from key community informants, to build a picture of what was done, why it was done, when it was done, how the various stakeholders worked together and what the outputs of the programme were. We will pay particular attention to changes organisations had to make from their usual ways of working, for instance exceptional levels of community engagement and new cross-agency mechanisms. The project is an evaluative case study which will link qualitative evidence from documents, interviews with key informants and quantitative evidence about activity, funding and outputs. It will use Framework Method Analysis for the qualitative analysis because Framework Analysis can be applied to a wide range of materials including documents and interviews and because it can readily be linked to quantitative data. We will disseminate results through papers in peer review journals and at conferences and through digital media. However we will also provide feedback directly to the many stakeholders including central and local government, the NHS, third sector organisations locally and nationally and, importantly, to the local community. The project involves service users as full, equal, members of the research team. Consultation and public and patient involvement is a key element of the project

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