Overview

Mind, the mental health charity, launched the supported self-help programme in April 2023. Supported self-help is an early intervention service for people with low to moderate levels of mental health need, using guided self-help tools to support mental wellbeing as soon as it is needed. Trained mental health practitioners from local Mind organisations deliver the project in community settings and remotely via the telephone. The programme was initially rolled out in Wales, before being rolled out across England in October 2023.

The Challenge

Mind required a secure, online system to capture data for clients, sessions, case notes, and evaluation forms. Local Minds would need access to tools to input their delivery, and the national management team would need access to a programme dashboard, where they could monitor and report on the data recorded throughout England and Wales.

The registration process for supported self-help would be handled via Limbic, an AI therapy assistant hosted on the Mind website, where people can enter their data, choose an assessment session, and sign up for the service. The data collection system chosen for supported self-help would need to integrate with the Limbic assistant, first sending data on available assessment sessions to Limbic, and then receiving the referral and assessment data from Limbic.

Views

Substance have worked with Mind over many years, with local Minds first starting to use Views in 2012. After a thorough procurement process, we were delighted that Views was chosen as the data collection system for supported self-help.

At the start of the process, Views consultants worked with the supported self-help management team to understand the data collection needs for the programme. In summer 2023, a new ‘Referrals’ module was built to manage referrals from the Mind website:

Mind also required that people who could not find a suitable session could go on a Waiting List. Local Minds would need to access this shared Waiting List and then contact people to arrange an assessment session. To facilitate this, a new Waiting List module was developed on Views.

This enables local Minds to match people on the waiting list with available assessment sessions at their organisation:

Substance also developed a range of English and Welsh notifications, so that clients are automatically informed of the status of their referral via SMS or Email.

After the Referral and Waiting List functionality was developed, Limbic began working with the Views API to receive and send data to the online therapy assistant:

Conclusion

Despite the complexity of the project, requiring multiple system developments and a third-party integration, the technical roll out was delivered on schedule and to a high standard. Supported self-help service users now have access to an integrated referral process – adding their data on the Mind website via the Limbic assessment, choosing an assessment session, and then automatically being added to the Views referral tool, where local Mind practitioners can begin recording their work.

Substance is delighted with the progress of the project and look forward to continued work with supported self-help over the coming years.

“We’re very pleased with Views’ support in developing a case management system that works for our practitioners, enabling them to deliver mental health support to more people across the nation.”

– Dr Ceri George (Mind, programme manager)