Redbridge Council's Health and Care Policy Development Committee has initiated a review into the integration of mental health services across the borough. The committee met on Wednesday, 18 February 2026, to discuss current provisions, identify challenges, and explore avenues for improvement.
A key focus of the meeting was an update on mental health services presented by Simon Froud, Executive Director for Adults Social Care and Health. The discussion highlighted housing as a critical factor impacting mental well-being, with a statistic revealing that 98% of them suffer from mental illnesses which lead into the pressures that they face.
These housing pressures include homelessness and not having a bed outside of the hospital.
Disengagement from services, particularly within diverse cultural groups, was also identified as a significant concern. To address this, a proposal was put forward to develop a hyper-localised
awareness campaign tailored to specific communities within Redbridge, aiming to foster greater engagement with mental health support. The specific communities it will target first are not detailed.
Councillor Jyotsna Rahman Islam emphasised the importance of co-production, involving individuals with lived experience of mental health challenges in shaping services. An example of this was shared: this gentleman jumped up and asked us who we were, and he mentioned that he was one of those people that had a lived experience and mentioned his previous psychotic break and how helpful this service has been.
The individual stated that the service had been perfect so far.
Broader involvement is anticipated to take a couple of months to get to that point,
with hopes for feedback by the latter part of this year, or the middle to latter part of this year.
Mr. Froud also provided an overview of services offered by NELFT (North East London Foundation Trust), detailing pathways into care, available support, and specialized teams. These pathways include memory clinics and talking therapies.
Specialized teams encompass an older person's mental health team,
memory assessment services,
a learning disability and autistic service,
services for ADHD and ASD,
and the AMP service (adult mental health practitioners) who assess under the Mental Health Act.
Challenges such as funding, workforce shortages, and increasing demand were acknowledged. Proposed strategies to address these include rearranging service provision to be more community-based
and developing place-based community hubs
with joint teams and those joint services.
The review of the Section 75 agreement also aims to look at how we fund and finance that service
and look at the staffing arrangements and how they're supported.
The committee also reviewed the Section 75 agreement, which governs the integration of health and social care services. Recent CQC inspections have identified areas for improvement, particularly in safeguarding and inter-agency information sharing. The ongoing review aims to tighten up our safeguarding process and policies and procedures,
enhance integration, co-location, funding, and staffing for joint teams.
Councillor Nav Kaur Johal raised concerns about hospital discharges and the clarity of support for informal carers. Mr. Froud committed to providing written responses to these queries, acknowledging that more information might be needed from hospital colleagues and the Integrated Care Board (ICB).
The complexities of data collection were also discussed, with information gathered by both social care and NELFT to understand trends and inform service provision. The committee's work plan can be found here. The public reports pack for the meeting is available here.
