Building a sustainable international mental health network
The NHS Benchmarking Network had the pleasure of co-hosting a virtual mental health leadership exchange meeting with our colleagues at the Global Leadership Exchange. The virtual meeting formed part of the 2024 Global Leadership Exchange titled ‘Leading Change: Flourishing Communities and Wellbeing for All’ taking place this year in Utrecht, Netherlands from 24-28 June. The GLE Exchange takes place every two years providing an opportunity for international leaders to come together to discuss best practice in mental health leadership from across the globe.
The NHS Benchmarking Network has worked with international colleagues to create and deliver an international mental health benchmarking report/dashboard to support international comparison and knowledge exchange since 2016. However, given the significant and wide reaching impact of the pandemic on those who commission, use, and deliver mental health services the match this year was a timely opportunity to pause and review the future of the international benchmarking work. The leadership exchange this year presented us with an opportunity to explore with international colleagues how to co-develop a longer term sustainable international benchmarking collaborative to create regular opportunities for networking, shared learning of best practice in mental health leadership, and data collection and resource development to support quality improvement, service development and transformation programmes.
The theme of our meeting this year were therefore titled ‘Developing a sustainable international mental health benchmarking collaborative’ and we were delighted that 19 colleagues from across six countries were able to join the virtual meeting with more colleagues attending the full Leadership Exchange in Utrecht. As part of the virtual meeting colleagues shared challenges in their respective systems, priority areas, and ideas about how to structure and design a more formalised network moving forward. We were particularly grateful to Swedish and UK colleagues who shared how benchmarking data from the international project work generated curiosity and generated lines of enquiry which lead to a UK-Swedish exchange of colleagues working in children and young people’s mental health services. The benchmarking work has continued to inform local and wider thinking about delivery of children and young people’s mental health services.
This year marks the start of what we hope will become an evolving international mental health benchmarking network. We look forward to working with GLE and international colleagues between now and the next Global Leadership Exchange in Canada in 2026, and sharing the learning with our vibrant benchmarking community in the UK.
Please find links to previous international benchmarking projects here: https://www.nhsbenchmarking.nhs.uk/international