A 10-year mental health and dementia strategy has been hailed as an "exemplary project".

Hampshire and Isle of Wight Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust's older people's mental health teams have won the Royal College of Psychiatrists' Psychiatric Team of the Year: Older-age Adults 2024 award.

The programme has been recognised for creating an ambitious whole system programme to look at creating equitable pathways for older people and people with dementia, developing new models and services where there are gaps and looking at best practice nationally and locally to determine the optimal models of care based on the changing population needs at a local level.

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(Image: Hampshire and Isle of Wight Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust) The team have created a blueprint to transform the pathways to meet the population’s needs now and over the next decade from 2024, which has been co-created with lived and learnt experience and with enormous support from partner organisations.

Judges noted that “their way of collaborative system approach to address inequalities in care and cocreate a vision to deliver high-quality evidence-based specialist mental health services for the older adults in Hampshire and Isle of Wight."

They added: "This would be an exemplary project that the team should be proud of and share widely.”

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Dr Vicki Osman-Hicks, clinical leader for the project, said: “We are keen to celebrate this programme that we are so proud of and the improvements it has and will enable for our communities and those that use our services now and, in the future."

Accepting the award on behalf of the trust, Katy Bartolomeo, operational leader for Older People’s Mental Health Project, added: “This is a really big team effort across Hampshire and the Isle of Wight, we are delighted to win this and want to especially thank all of our carers and family members, and the team and all the services for their hard work.

The team thanked carers, family members and all services for their hard work.