Enter & View: Living Well Network Hub

Report - 23 August 2016

As a provider of community based mental health support services, we chose to conduct an Enter and View visits at Living Well Network (LWN) Hub. A ‘front door’ to comprehensive community mental health and wellbeing support.

Summary

The Lambeth Living Well Network (LWN) Hub is a ‘front door’ to comprehensive community mental health and wellbeing support. It hosts a multidisciplinary team of professionals from across Thamesreach, Certitude, Lambeth Council and the South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust, who work collaboratively to meet service-user needs. The aims of the visit were to: listen to how mental health service users perceive the quality of the support at LWN Hub and, if and how it enables them to manage and maintain their wellbeing understand how service users find information and learn about where they can seek help and support elsewhere that appropriately meets their needs.

Key findings

Location - The site is situated off a busy main road that is well served with several bus routes and is a five-minute walk away from an overground train station.
Quality of services - On the day of our planned visit, we were unable to talk to any service users at the main site. Staff explained that it was a particularly quiet day
Staff interaction - Service users described their limited interaction with LWN Hub staff as “really nice”, “pretty good” and “A1 – they are the best”.

We made a series of recoomendations:

Clear signage should be placed at the entrance to the premises to ensure visitors can easily locate the service.
Review understanding of the LWN Hub service and resource/publicity materials available to local stakeholders (particularly GPs) to ensure that the information provided to patients explains clearly what the LWN does and why they are being referred to the service.

Given the limited nature of interaction service users had had with the LWN Hub, we were unable to gain a substantial impression of the quality of the service. That said, the initial feedback provided suggests that service users are being listened to, and that support will be offered to deal with their immediate needs.