Lisa Murray works in the Transformation and Integration Team at the Black Country Mental Health Partnership Foundation Trust and her role is primarily to work with the community sector across the Black Country. Lisa transferred across to the Trust from the Black Country CCG in July 2022, where she worked in mental health commissioning, when all of the CCGs mental health transferred to the Trust, as Lead Provider. The Transformation and Integration Team also includes health inequalities and prevention, employment services, the Recovery College, Mental Health First Aid and the community inclusion workers, and is led by Laura Brookes, Head of Transformation and Integration.
The work that Lisa does supports the Trust having a better understanding of the community sector across the Black Country and the needs in the community. By engaging more and more with the community sector the Trust can partner with them to help reduce health inequalities and have much more of a preventative focus.
The Trust is starting to work in partnership with a number of these community sector organisations. Examples of this are partnership working with organisations who provide support to diverse ethnic minorities; provision of peer support; partnership working on projects that aim to improve physical and mental well-being; projects that provides advice, guidance and sign-posting, not just for health but for welfare rights, housing, jobs; suicide prevention; there are projects currently working in Walsall to support individuals with a serious mental illness to ensure they are accessing their welfare benefits as part of the health inequalities and prevention work. Other projects including looking at providing counselling services in the community to not only make it easier to access and reduce waiting lists, but also because the community sector can provide additional support such as activities, connections, befriending etc.
Lisa also manages the Black Country Mental Health Stakeholder Forum where many of these organisations come together, with members of the community as well as statutory services, to jointly talk about issues, provide updates, network and discuss future partnership working on things that matter to our communities.
A page on the Black Country Mental Health Partnership Foundation Trust internet is being developed which will outline more of the partnership working and the work of the whole team so please keep an eye out for this to get further updates on this work going forward. If you would like to know more, please contact Lisa on Lisa.murray7@nhs.net