Mental Health Safety Improvement Programme (MH SIP)

Please note, this programme of work has been completed and is no longer being updated. The below information is provided for reference only. 

The Mental Health Safety Improvement Programme (MH SIP) is a 2 year national programme which started in 2021, commissioned by NHS England and NHS Improvement as part of the Patient Safety Strategy. It aims to support mental health trusts test and scale interventions designed to improve safety in inpatient settings.

Project overview

The programme has one primary objective:

1. Reducing Restrictive Practice – building on the National Collaborating Centre for Mental Health (NCCMH) collaborative on restrictive practice

We are connecting with all 4 NHS Mental Health Providers and 2 Independent Hospitals in Wessex to directly support at least 10% of wards to utilise the RRP change package and so test and implement interventions that lead to a minimum 25% reduction in restrictive practice.

The work is underpinned by the principles of quality improvement, co-design and patient safety learning. A Wessex Patient Safety Network has been established to support the programme, bringing together individuals and organisations concerned with safer care and improved outcomes in mental health in a dedicated space for improvement, shared learning, and growth.

Wessex is working with 4 other Patient Safety Collaboratives to deliver the South of England Mental Health Collaborative to support the MH SIP.

This collaborative includes members of 16 Mental Health providers that are working with Wessex, West of England, South West, Kent Surrey and Sussex and Oxford HIN.

We have seen success across the wards in our region and you view case studies from a number of wards in the resources tab on the right hand side of this page.

Sexual safety

Alongside the reducing restrictive practice, we are working closely with the National Collaborating Centre for Mental Health (NCCMH) to support dissemination of learning and resources from the national Sexual Safety Collaborative. If you would like to know more about this work, the NCCMH webpage for their Sexual Safety Collaborative contains lots of information including the sexual safety standards and guidance, as well as all their resources related to the 18 month pilot improvement collaborative.

Suicide and self-harm prevention 

Further, the NCCMH also runs a national suicide and self-harm prevention programme alongside the National Confidential Inquiry into Suicide and Safety in Mental Health (NCISH), commissioned by NHS England’s Mental Health Policy Team. This programme has been running since June 2018 and is very well established across every Integrated Care System (ICS) in England. Further information and resources related to this work can be found on their Suicide Prevention National Transformation Programme webpage.