The Mental Health and Wellbeing Service WHISe, part of the NAViGO family, has been award a CCA Good Practice Award for the category Excellence in the Care Process.

The annual award from The Care Co-ordination Association is an opportunity for staff and organisations to raise their profile and celebrate areas of excellent healthcare practice. The Excellence in the Care Process category looks for care planning and management practices that promote service user and care involvement, demonstrate an innovative use of IT, and have wellbeing and recovery focussed objectives.

WHISe was created in reaction to research that revealed that people suffering from severe mental illness have a shorter life expectancy of 30 years compared to the general population. It was launched in January this year believing that we need to “WHISe up! and work with primary care to form an improved service. WHISe is a holistic integrated mental health care platform that offers care and health assessments to those on the Care Programme Approach with a severe and complex mental illness, as well as offering the knowledge and support to enable those people to live a healthier lifestyle. WHISe provides services such as quick communication between service users and GPs, equipment to perform ECGs and routine tests, and any advice service users need to explore healthier life choices.

WHISe has now seen hundreds of people and has got treatment quicker for patients with illnesses such as appendicitis, strokes and cancer!