CCQI Sustainability Month - June 2022

The College Centre for Quality Improvement is excited to announce its first Sustainability Month aimed at providing teams with ideas and resources to work towards a more sustainable service.

The month will be filled with online events, newsletters, and resources around sustainability in mental health. The main objective is to increase the understanding of sustainability in mental health services and provide suggestions and resources for services to introduce sustainable practices. There will be opportunities to connect with services across the UK to share ideas and learn how others have considered sustainability across all aspects of service delivery.

The month will also demonstrate how the CCQI quality standards and accreditation process can be utilised to help make your service sustainable.

By registering, you’ll gain access to all webinars and resources across the month.

Details of confirmed webinars can be found below with more dates soon to be added.

RCPsych Sustainability Leads.

8 June at 3pm

The RCPsych Sustainability Leads will be giving an introduction to sustainability in healthcare, the work the College has done so far and an overview of how the CCQI sustainability principles apply to services.

Kate Townsend - Programme Manager for the Greener NHS team at NHS England/Improvement.

9 June at 2pm

Patients are experiencing the effects of climate change today, as increased air pollution and warmer summers are exacerbating health conditions, while future generations are threatened by the risk of increased flooding and vector borne diseases. The NHS contributes 4-5% of the UKs emissions, (which is about the same as all the flights coming in and out of Heathrow airport!) and have made a pledge to go fully net zero by 2045.

Yet, public perception of how the NHS contributes to climate change remains low. This presentation will give some national context on what the biggest emissions are, and how we plan to tackle them. Then, we will look at the national and regional priorities, linking with the digital advancements from COVID, as well as the impact and effect on population health management, health inequalities and digital exclusion.

Dr Mark Horowitz, Clinical Research Fellow in Psychiatry at University College London and North East London NHS Foundation Trust.

13 June at 1pm 

This webinar will examine the evidence for long-term use of psychiatric medications (with a focus on antidepressants and antipsychotics) in light of the design of ‘relapse prevention’ trials and increasing acknowledgement of withdrawal effects from these medications.

An approach to deprescribing psychiatric medications is outlined: involving a more gradual approach than is often employed, following a pattern of smaller and smaller reductions, down to small final doses, based on the pharmacological action of these medications.

The Royal College of Psychiatrists guidance on ‘Stopping Antidepressants’ and new guidance from NICE (concerning stopping antidepressants, benzodiazepines, z-drugs, and gabapetinoids) which espouses these principles are highlighted.

Jessica French, Adult Education Tutor and Becky Webber, Occupational Support Worker

15 June at 1pm 

A presentation on the initiatives we have put in place related to reducing food waste in the therapies department. This includes a group at the end of the week to use food which would otherwise end up in the bin. We have also started composting onsite in our garden and have made changes in the service user training cafe related to sustainable practices. It will also cover engagement with local community projects and the service user group we've set up to make changes in the wider unit.

Emily Cannon - National Collaborating Centre for Mental Health.

16 June at 1pm

This webinar will share the design, results and learning from the National Collaborating Centre for Mental Health’s (NCCMH) national Enjoying Work Collaborative (EWC) - a quality improvement (QI) programme to enhance staff wellbeing and create joy in work. The 12-month collaborative, launched in May 2021, worked with 39 teams across 16 healthcare organisations in England and Wales, including NHS, Health Education England and private healthcare providers.

Teams collected weekly data and preliminary results include a 44% improvement in the percentage of people who have enjoyed being at work frequently and a 39% improvement in the percentage of people who are experiencing no symptoms of burnout.

Susan McCormack, Mode Rehabilitation and Richard Mason, Cheswold Park Recovery College

24 June at 2pm

This webinar will focus on two separate therapeutic interventions that promote sustainability by prioritising prevention and empowering individuals.

Mode Rehabilitation will present on a new psychotherapeutic approach that helps to empower patients, presenting initial findings from it’s application and focusing in on the patient’s experience.

Cheswold Park will then be presenting on the therapeutic benefits of their horticultural interventions, and how they support the progression of patients.

Hayley Pinto, Education and Training Lead, The Centre for Sustainable Healthcare

 28 June at 1pm

Quality improvement is a powerful tool for positive change in mental health services, but currently fails to address the challenges of the climate crisis, the mental health impacts of this and the NHS ambition to achieve net zero emissions. What if QI could be adapted to tackle these issues? Dr. Pinto will discuss how to embed sustainability within QI, to improve patient outcomes whilst also creating positive social impact, saving money, time and the planet. 

Professor David Veale, Anxiety Disorders Residential Unit, South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust

28 June at 4pm 

This session will showcase the work of the 2021 winners of the RCPsych Sustainability Award. The project “From Plot to Perfect Poo” at the Anxiety Disorders Residential Unit supports residents to grow and cook produce and source local ingredients for everyday eating, and will also form the basis of a new hospital café run by residents. The project empowers residents and promotes a culture of belonging through shared tasks such as gardening, cooking and hospitality.

Dr Cate Bailey, Dr Farah Bede and Ms Elouise Mayall

29 June at 11am 

The climate crisis is a health crisis, and is also a human rights crisis. It disproportionately affects people who already living in poverty, with pre-existing health issues, the very young and very old, women, Black and Brown people and Indigenous populations who have contributed least to the problem.

This session will explore the intersections of these inequalities at a global and local level and aims to inspire attendees to ground their ideas for sustainability projects the principles of justice and equality. The session will also explore ideas of what healthcare professionals can do both as individuals, at work, and collectively to take action against the climate crisis.

Katherine Kennett, RCPSych Social Prescribing Lead and Sarah Markham, RCPsych Patient Representative

29 June at 12pm 

Content coming soon!

Annymn Adams, St Andrews and Victoria Woodruff, Montpellier Low Secure Recovery Service

29 June at 2pm

A reflection of how therapy services and service users co-produced the development of an outdoor gardening space using environmentally sustainable practices. Outcomes will focus on:

• the therapeutic benefit to service users
• physical environment and making it more accessible for service users and staff
• educational and vocational opportunities for service users, development of partnerships with like-minded community-based organisations
• positive impact in context of workforce challenges.

The Montpellier Allotment Project An overview of the project, the site and the benefits to service users, carers and the local community. The project has been recently redeveloped to benefit a wider group of people. All opportunities to work collaboratively with service users, experts by experience, professionals and the wider community are utilised. Sustainability, both in terms of environmental and as a continuing recovery resource will be discussed in depth.

Jacob Krzanowski and Shuo Zhang, RCPsych Sustainability and Planetary Health Committee

30 June at 2pm

Jacob Krzanowski and Shuo Zhang, members of the RCPsych Sustainability and Planetary Health Committee, will be leading this interactive session exploring why sustainable healthcare is important to us, and discussing how attendees can consider sustainability in their own service.

The session will provide opportunities for networking and attendees will come away with practical ideas to support them in continuing to develop a sustainable service.

Please read our terms and conditions before making your booking.

For online events such as webinars our webinars are run through Zoom, to access the webinar you will need the Zoom desktop or mobile app. You can download this on any mobile device, tablet or on Windows or Mac. You can view further details on how to join the webinars on the Zoom website.