The Demand, Capacity and Flow Collaborative is a brand-new national Quality Improvement (QI) collaborative being launched by The Royal College of Psychiatrists’ National Collaborating Centre for Mental Health (NCCMH). The aims are to support community and inpatient teams within mental health services across the UK to understand demand, develop and test change ideas to improve flow, reduce waiting lists and manage demand in creative ways. The Collaborative will run for eighteen months, beginning January 2023. The initial two months will involve teams setting up for the work, and then sixteen months spent testing ideas and embedding changes. 

All the teams on the collaborative will come together seven times over the course of the collaborative for in-person learning sessions designed to share ideas and take inspiration from each other. We have four teams from NELFT who have applied to take part: 

• Barking and Dagenham Adult autism spectrum disorder service 
• Waltham Forest Mental Health Single Point of Access Service 
• Havering Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service (CAMHS) 
• Havering Mental Health and Wellness Teams 

The participating costs will be covered by applications from these teams to the Quality Improvement Services Innovation Cave for funding these teams to take part.