South West London CCG Annual Report and Accounts 2020/21

acute and primary care clinicians, to support restarting elective surgical operations and treatments. They enabled our hospitals to work together to manage those patients who urgently needed care. As a CCG, we were able to support these new networks with experienced primary care clinicians and commissioning managers, ensuring a focus on the whole patient journey and coordinating patient care across different settings. We have also supported and worked with our mental health providers to ensure people with mental health needs or a learning disability receive the same protection and support with managing their health and wellbeing during the pandemic as other members of the population. The impact of Covid-19 on our communities’ mental wellbeing has been significant. In the year since the pandemic began, depression rates have doubled and primary care colleagues are predicting and planning for a surge of mental health issues in the future. In this report you can read about how we have supported our providers to conduct virtual consultations for IAPT and been an active partner, together with local people and organisations from across South London, in the Covid-19: Preventing a Mental Health Crisis Summit in July 2020. Following this summit the South London Covid-19 Preventing Mental Ill Health Taskforce was created, with the aim of preventing thousands of people’s lives being affected by mental illness and to develop a long-term programme to protect our communities’ mental health. South West London CCG has also been an active participant in the South London Listens programme. More than 5,000 people have taken part in the initiative, and the partnership is now working with local people and community groups to co-produce solutions that will be published as part of a two-year action plan in Summer 2021. From December 2020, we have also been delivering the Covid vaccination programme, with over 600,000 vaccinations administered to more than half a million people in South West London, as at the end of March 2021. Our CCG staff and primary care colleagues are at the centre of this programme as we continue to inform, engage and protect more of our local people into 2021. CCG clinical leadership and the wider South West London system One of the strengths of the CCG is the strong and experienced clinical leaders within it, and this has proved invaluable over the past year in responding to the pandemic. The report outlines the work of the South West London Clinical Cell established by the South West London Clinical Chair in the initial phase of the pandemic, to set consistent clinical standards, ensure consistent policies across the system, including a shared approach to infection prevention and control. The membership was broad across health and care organisations and professional groups. It became a source of support and advice, as well as a forum to share best practice for clinical leaders now working in a system, as well as in individual organisations. 8 | NHS South West London Clinical Commissioning Group