Birmingham and Solihull Mental Health Foundation Trust partnering with Birmingham Women’s and Children’s Trust’s Forward Thinking Birmingham are delighted to announce the official opening of a new, modernised Urgent Care Centre facility at Oleaster. Urgent care pathways have been developed to improve patients’ access to urgent mental health assessment, and part of the improvement is the greater integration of services provided by BSMHFT and Forward Thinking Birmingham at the new facility.
The mission was to develop an urgent care centre providing a therapeutic environment for adults and children of all ages – and it has been realised! This is a very important improvement and will provide service users with purpose built therapeutic environment which is future proofed to meet changing demand. The centre is part of the exciting work taking place around the transforming crisis pathway and supports the long term vision of an integrated crisis offer. This will support health professionals from adult and children’s services, working seamlessly.
Paula Lloyd Knight, “Associate Director of Operations, (Acute and Urgent Care) said, “Today marks a really important day whereby the two organisation will be able to provide high quality services to both children and adults in crisis. This wonderful purpose built building will change the way we support people and takes us a step closer to realising our vision of a transform crisis offer for people across Birmingham and Solihull.”
Alex Borg, Executive Director of Mental Health Services at Birmingham Women’s and Children’s Hospital said,
"Forward Thinking Birmingham (FTB) are thrilled to see the official opening of the Oleaster Urgent Care Centre, the £1m investment has created a purpose-built facility that will be one of the first all-age centres for mental health urgent care and is the first step in true partnership working across our mental health care system.
“Following consultation, careful planning with young people and a lot of hard work, FTB will be providing the new PDU (Psychiatric Decisions Unit). This will aid crisis and urgent assessments for young people under 18 and is part of the ongoing investment in mental health services by Birmingham and Solihull in relation to children and young people's crisis care.”
The new centre was opened on Friday 11 February by Elaine Kirwan, Director of Nursing (Mental Health Services) and Paula Lloyd Knight, Associate Director of Operations (Acute and Urgent Care).
