Community Navigator Support Service: Developments

During the Coronavirus pandemic Community Navigators and mPower project has supported both health and social care, or people who require to access these services.  It has done this by:

• offering support on how to keep in touch virtually.  This has been extended to provide people with a lending service to try devices before they purchase e.g. KOMP, Alexas and Samsung Tablets.
• training Community Navigators in Psychological First Aid as part of the Western Isles Psychological Wellbeing Hub.
• triaging adult referrals to the Western Isles Psychological Wellbeing Hub to ensure individuals get   the right support at the right time, with a focus on wider support other than mental health.
• progressing a number of mental health support apps including Sleepio, Beating the Blues, Silver Cloud
• providing access to Silver Cloud products – space from stress, space from COVID-19, space for resilience and space for sleep.
• following a clinical referral, providing access and support to Silver Cloud product Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT), Rheumatoid Arthritis, Health Anxiety, Diabetes, COVID-19, Social Anxiety, Coronary Heard Disease, Chronic Pain, and Lung Conditions.  Working in conjunction with Psychologist on all these items
• supporting Langabhat Medical Practice to provide a Blood Pressure (BP) home monitoring programme to assist people with devices and support in their home and utilise the Florence app.  Supporting Group Practice to help patients utilise eConsult, an online consultation which is a form of digital triage.
• offering patients support to utilise the NHS Western Isles Near Me service to provide healthcare appointments closer to home.
• working in partnership with Comhairle nan Eilean Siar to provide iPads at each Western Isles care home.  Link established on Council website to enable people to access. To view click here.
• delivering a pilot project ‘Whzan’ in partnership with Comhairle nan Eilean Siar, in Harris House, Dun Berisay and Leverburgh Care Home, providing an all-in-one tele-health case. It measures vital signs, records photos, performs multiple assessments and questionnaires including the Royal College of Physicans' National Early Warning Score – NEWS2 to check health.  Early signs of decline are flagged before an illness worsens and provides an immediate response for higher quality of care.

• Designed, developed and implemented a Community Navigator service across the Western Isles.
• Developing a range of Community Hubs for patients and the general public.  This includes NHS Near Me rooms in community and working with Land Trusts to develop community responses to reduce isolation.
• More to be added…

The Community Navigator service has been well received particularly in light of its role in Covid pandemic response.  

As a result there are a number of further developments planned for this service both as part of mPower project, but also linking with a number of other new related service innovations.  These include:

Health and Social Care Staff Psychological Support

Funding from Scottish Government Mental Health Department. to provide additional Community Navigator capacity to support NHS and care staff mental wellbeing. 

Via Psychology and Human Resources Departments, NHS Western Isles has received £25,000 funding (to end of March 2023) to deliver psychological interventions and therapies to support the mental health and wellbeing of health and social care staff across the Western Isles. 

As the NHS Western Isles Community Navigator Support Service has been key in supporting local Psychological Services in delivering online psychological interventions for the general public, they are well placed to extend this support to care staff.  

Distress Brief Interventions

Plans are in development for the NHS Western Isles Community Navigator Support Service to provide psychological Distress Brief Interventions (DBIs) within the Western Isles. 

DBIs provide short problem solving contact with persons in distress.  It does this via two-level approach:

• Level 1 is provided by front line staff in A&E, Primary Care and the Police to give a compassionate response, signposting and offer of referral to DBI Level 2. 
• Level 2 will be provided in the Western Isles by our Community Navigator service supported by existing community mental wellbeing groups.  This will include a 14 day package of community-based problem solving support, wellness and distress management planning, supported connections and signposting.

Plans are currently being considered and it is hoped this service will begin to be implemented in the Western Isles via the national DBI Associate Programme. For further information visit: https://www.dbi.scot/

Mental Wellbeing Pilot Innovation Projects:

NHS Western Isles recognises the value that innovation can play in improving health and developing health and care services particularly in a remote and rural environment. 

To that end NHS Western Isles has joined a number of partnerships in innovative projects over the years developing and trialling innovative solutions. 

This has seen technological solutions trialled in support of persons with dementia and the frail elderly in its REMODEM and REMOAGE European Projects and now continues this commitment to trialling innovation in the latest projects below.

ChatPal – Digital Wellbeing Chatbots

NHS Western Isles is partner in Northern Periphery & Arctic INTERREG Project ChatPal to develop and test multi-lingual chatbot technologies to support and promote mental health and wellbeing. 

The key aim is to create and pilot with local mental health groups a chatbot service that is effective for providing a blended digital mental wellbeing service supporting mental health workers across different age groups and so improving access to mental wellbeing support in remote and rural areas.  

A prototype ChatPal chatbot has been released as part of response to Covid-19 providing positive psychological support to people and developments are taking place to create English-Gaelic full version for trialling in the Western Isles with participants in 2021.

The project is led by Ulster University with partners in Sweden, Finland and Ireland.  NHS Western Isles will be working with local stakeholders WIAMH, Penumbra and Foyer to develop such new services to best meet local needs.  For more information visit: http://chatpal.interreg-npa.eu/

IT4Anxiety Project

NHS Western Isles are partners in a new four year IT4Anxiety project funded under North West Europe INTERREG programme led by St. Martin Neuropsychiatry Centre in Belgium with partners in Brittany, France, Netherlands and Germany. 

The project will focus on the creation and implementation of innovative technology solutions with the objective of reducing the anxiety of patients suffering from neurodegenerative diseases e.g. Alzheimer‘s disease. 

The project aims to begin developing such technological solutions with key groups in Western Isles over coming months before testing alongside conventional approaches as “blended therapies".  Partners will work with a number of solution providers from technology companies to create and test such new products to support people facing anxiety disorders.  Some examples are provided below:

For more information visit: https://www.nweurope.eu/projects/project-search/it4anxiety-managing-anxiety-via-innovative-technologies-for-better-mental-health/#tab-1

Note. If you represent a community support group interested in working with NHS Western Isles in the above Innovation Projects, or you are someone who thinks you may benefit from the solutions we plan to trial and would like to participate, then please contact Martin Malcolm, Western Isles Projects Lead Martin Malcolm by emailing: martin.malcolm2@nhs.scot or telephoning 01851 708011.