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RESOLVED
 
That
the Shared Services Joint Committee:
 

 i.         
Approved the Approved Mental Health Professional
Service becoming a permanent countywide Service for adults as an
aggregated service with North Northamptonshire Council named as the
Lead Authority, with new arrangements coming into effect on or
after 1st September 2025.
 

ii.         
Approved the transfer of responsibilities for
provision of an Out of Hours Approved Mental Health Professional
Service and Out of Hours adults social care response service from
Northamptonshire Children’s Trust, creating a permanent
Countywide Service for adults as an aggregated service with North
Northamptonshire Council named as the Lead Authority.

 

iii.         
Approved the implementation of the EDT Enhanced Call
Care service proposal.

 

iv.         
Granted delegated authority to the Monitoring
Officers for North Northamptonshire Council and West
Northamptonshire Council to amend the relevant provisions within
the IAA.
 

v.         
Approved that North Northamptonshire Council and
West Northamptonshire Council work together under an MOU that will
provide for the agreed new governance procedures, charges and
associated joint collaborative working arrangements to ensure
service delivery under the new arrangements. 
 

vi.         
Noted that North Northamptonshire Council will
commence recruitment of additional AMHPs to the service
team.

 

vii.         
Agreed all parties to work towards a transfer of
services and the creation of a 24/7 AMHP and out of hours social
care response service team led by North Northamptonshire Council,
supported by an enhanced call care service provided by West
Northamptonshire Council from 1st September 2025. 

 

viii.         
Agreed that both North Northamptonshire Council and
West Northamptonshire Council make provision for an increased
service delivery budget through Medium Term financial Planning from
2026/27 onwards.
 
Reasons for the Recommendations:
 

1.        
It is a requirement of the Mental Health Act 1983
and 2007 that Local Authorities put in place arrangements to
provide AMHP services 24 Hours a day, 7 days a week. Out of Hours
services, are currently provided through an Emergency Duty Team
(EDT) function at NCT, which provides services to both Adults and
Children across Northamptonshire. Having considered their own
service delivery model and operational pressures, NCT have formally
requested that the adults' elements of the EDT service transfer to
WNC and NNC to sit directly alongside the substantive Adults Social
Care functions during weekday evenings and nights.
 

2.        
Retaining the daytime service delivery under the IAA
and amending the IAA to reflect the addition of out of hours
services to create a single 24/7 service delivery model, will
ensure that there continues to be a formal agreement in place,
agreed by NNC and WNC. The 24/7 service model for the AMHP service
ensures a continuous effective service delivery within this
statutory function. It also considerably reduces the risk of
service failures or issues as a result
of limited specialist resources and capacity to support the
vulnerable end-users, as well as reputational damage.

 

3.        
From a budget perspective, the direct costs to both
NNC and WNC will increase as additional AMHP qualified staff will
need to be employed to deliver services, and additional team leader
and business support roles will be required.

 

4.        
From a workforce perspective, staff at NCT will be
redeployed to NNC under TUPE regulations. Consideration has been
given to reviewing shift patterns and rotas to focus resource
availability to times of greatest demand, and to provide suitable cover at all times to ensure
statutory requirements are met. 

 

5.        
From an operational delivery perspective, combining
AMHP services into a single point of delivery 24/7 model will
reduce handover of casework between teams, enable flexibility and
harmonisation of services.

 

6.        
From the perspective of people accessing the
service, separating service delivery teams focussing on children's
and adults' needs will improve efficiency and surety of service. A
single point of delivery 24/7 service for adult social care and
mental health response will allow staff to reduce handovers of case
work and focus on front line service delivery.

 

7.        
To ensure the service has resilience an analysis of
points of contact considering source, date and time data has been
carried out. This information has been used to establish service
team operations (shift patterns, staff rotas etc) to ensure that
sufficient resources are available at times of need, with suitable
levels of provision being provided to comply
with statutory requirements at all times. 
 
Alternative Options Considered:
 
Disaggregation of the service
 
The
disaggregation of the AMHP service (i.e
NNC and WNC operate separate 24/7 AMHP and safeguarding services)
would present a high statutory risk to both local authorities,
leaving people experiencing mental health crisis at risk and posing
a potential danger to themselves or others.
 
The
Approved Mental Health Professional Service and Out of Hours adults
social care response service is the statutory responsibility of
each Council with safeguarding of the people supported paramount,
ensuring that they receive the best outcomes.
 
Fully disaggregating the service between NNC and WNC would
require increasing the size of the team in each council
in order to provide a safe
service.  There is a national shortage
of suitably qualified AMHPs and therefore recruitment to vacant
posts is difficult.  Due to the
complexity of the role, it takes two years to train
staff
 
Continuing
with an out of hours Emergency Duty Team (EDT) provided by
NCT
 
The
existing NCT EDT establishment does not have enough AMHP-qualified
staff to be able to cover all of the
shifts required. Therefore, shifts are either short-staffed or rely
on overtime, agency hours and cover from the Senior
Management.
 
Only
2% of AMHP-qualified staff nationally are employed in
Children’s Services. This may suggest that an increased risk
profile may exist for recruitment, retention or staff training in
such operational models. For example, NCT has had open-recruitment
for AMHP-qualified Social Workers for 12 months and during this
time one AMHP-qualified Principal Social Worker has been
recruited.
 
As
well as the additional cost that this expensive method of
resourcing carries, service and response times are also adversely
affected. It is not currently uncommon for casework originating
through an out of hours referral to be handed over to the
substantive daytime team for completion.
 
Outsource
service delivery.
 
There may potentially be options to outsource service delivery
to third parties (e.g. neighbouring local authorities) however
these have not been considered as it is unlikely that either a)
other local authorities have sufficient resources in place to
provide such services b) NNC and WNC would still retain statutory
responsibility for the services and outsourcing would result in
delivery being put at arm's length with less direct control over
risk management and c) there are unlikely to be any financial
benefits of outsourcing – particularly given the limited
national resource availability. 
However, partnership working with other health care sector partners
is and will continue to be an important factor in AMHPs and out of
hours service delivery considerations.