The primary care mental health programme was launched for consultation at the NIMHE Impact Conference on 30 January 2003. Building on work already undertaken its overall aims are to:

• help practitioners improve the fundamentals of care
• facilitate and encourage innovative practice.

The programme includes seven areas, led by Primary Care leads based in one or more of NIMHE's local development centres:

Delivering the programme

Three methods are proposed as means of putting proposals into practice:

• Using established "collaborative" methodology
• Roll out the "teaching the teachers" and "trailblazer" methodology to support local leadership and clinical skills
• Work with the leadership centre to exploit tolls already established to promote leadership capacity

Early Actions

Within a three year programme the following early actions are proposed:

• Early work through the Development Centre structure to raise awareness and provide advice and support to PCTs on primary care graduate workers
• Establishing networks and workshops to improve capacity and capability in commissioning
• Considering the early implementation or primary care mental health collaboratives
• Developing proposals for the teach the teacher/trailblazer methodology

The programme is firmly committed to a "bottom up" approach; an approach which emphasises the power of helping front line staff find their own solutions to the problems they face.

How to get involved

For further information please contact Mary Sheppard, the Programme Manager: mary.sheppard@nimhe.wmids.nhs.uk

Related web sites
Primary Care in Mental Health Education: www.primhe.org