Enhanced Recovery Worker Service

The Enhanced Recovery Worker Service aim is to support and improve the mental health and wellbeing of people across Norfolk and Waveney, at a primary care level. The service is available to people aged over 14 years who are registered with a GP practice in Norfolk and Waveney experiencing mild to moderate mental health needs who are low risk to self and others.

The service takes a personalised 1-1 approach offering a maximum of up to six recovery-focused and goal-based sessions according to need. The Service forms part of the wider Primary Care Mental health offer, providing support in GP Practices and outreaching to community-based settings.

The service works alongside other services in Primary Care and the local community to provide holistic support to meet the needs of people experiencing mental health issues. The service connects to wider organisations, and community support offers and provides warm handovers to support individuals to engage with ongoing support to meet their identified needs.

The service aims to focus support on the needs of those most likely to experience mental health issues such as people experiencing health inequalities. The service will offer an outreach element which will help to engage and support people with these additional needs in communities by focussing on areas of high deprivation and Core20 Plus populations.

The service focuses on prevention by providing early help and by targeting those areas where people are more likely to experience poor mental health and may find it harder to access support. Following completion of the Provider Selection Regime 'Direct Award C' assessment detailed in the report, it has been deemed that the existing provider is satisfying the existing contract and is likely to satisfy the new contract.

As such, it is recommended that a contract is awarded to Norfolk and Waveney Mind to continue to deliver the Enhanced Recovery Workers Service to the patient population of Norfolk and Waveney ICB for the period 01 July 2026 to 31 July 2027. The provider will continue to recruit, retain, and support a workforce of Enhanced Recovery Workers to provide adequate capacity and resilience to deliver the outcomes of the service.

Each Primary Care Network will have Enhanced Recovery Worker provision aligned to it. Provision/capacity will be allocated by need using population health data.

The Enhanced Recovery Workers will work collaboratively within the GP Practice and the wider mental health support offer, Primary Care Network, and wider Neighbourhood area to build relationships and help to ensure that the individual receives the right support first time. -The service will take a personalised approach offering a maximum of up to six 1-1 recovery-focused and goal-based sessions according to need. -To maximise capacity, the core service (excluding the outreach model) will deliver a minimum of 8 appointments in a standard working day. The Enhanced Recovery Workers will work in conjunction with Mental Health Practitioners (Additional Role Reimbursement Scheme) and other practice staff within their designated GP Practice/Primary Care Network/ Neighbourhood. This neighbourhood-based team supports patients with mental health needs to access recommended interventions and to support their recovery.