Thinking Ahead Briefing

Introduction

Avon and Wiltshire Mental Health Partnership NHS Trust (AWP) is the largest specialist provider of mental health, learning disabilities and autism services in the south west and one of the largest in the country, with around 5,000 staff supporting a population of 1.9million people

Most of our work is with people in the community who have a severe mental illness. This includes conditions like psychosis, bi-polar affective disorder, schizophrenia, complex emotional distress and trauma. We also provide inpatient services for people with learning disabilities and autism and patients who require a period of treatment in a psychiatric intensive care bed, an acute bed or a rehabilitation bed. We offer talking therapies in Bath and North East Somerset, Swindon and Wiltshire, and Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services in Bristol, North Somerset and South Gloucestershire.

• Each year we receive around 85,000 referrals
• 260,000 people in our region are affected by common mental illness  and are treated in primary care (GPs)
• 17,000 people in our region are affected by severe mental illness and treated by AWP in secondary care

Our Thinking Ahead newsletter provides a snapshot of the work we’re doing to provide high quality, compassionate mental health, learning disability and autism care for the people we serve.

Work starts on a new Learning Disability and Autism Unit for the south west

We recently had the green light to start work on a new specialist mental health inpatient unit specifically designed by and for people with a learning disability and/or autistic people. It will be built on the Blackberry Hill site in Bristol but serve the wider south west region

It has been designed specifically to care for individuals with a learning disability or autistic people who would benefit from treatment in a hospital when their needs cannot be met in the community or in a mainstream mental health unit.