Lessons from the health and wellbeing response to the Grenfell Tower Fire: A multi-methods approach

Research Questions: How did statutory agencies decide on the content and structure of the mental health and wellbeing response to Grenfell? Why did they take the decisions they did? What novel approaches did they use? What were the outputs? How did they work together with voluntary sector providers and local residents to plan and develop it?

Background: The Grenfell Tower fire in 2017 was one of the biggest post war disasters in the UK. Grenfell is a centred event, the main impact fell on a single socially linked community and health/social care system. Part of the response was a multiagency mental health and wellbeing response.

The intention of the agencies was not only to treat mental health problems but also to provide wider wellbeing support to a community severely disrupted by the fire and its social and political fall-out.

The response involved primary and secondary care NHS, local authority, national and local third sector providers and community members.

This project is a contextualized case study addressing mainly the first two years to June 2019 spanning the emergency and early recovery phase.

The response is of potential significance for planning for emergencies nationally and internationally, particularly for centred events.

Given the challenges of planning and delivering the programme against such a complex background we will pay particular attention to those elements of the programme where innovation occurred and organisations had to go outside the constraints of normal business as usual practice and innovate to solve novel problems.

Aims: To draw lessons from the Grenfell tower disaster and the mental health and wellbeing response to inform future planning and delivery of services for centred major incidents.Objectives To bring together information from a variety of evidence sources to build a clear picture of how the parties involved went about developing and delivering a multi-agency programme..

Methodology: Evaluative case study using triangulation of documentary evidence from the NHS and local authority, evidence from semi-structured interviews with key decision makers and other key informants, and quantitative data on activity, costs and outputs. Analysis of documents and interview transcipts will be carried out using a Framework Method approach.

Work Plan: Months 1-3, setup, construct preliminary timeline, prepare framework; Months 4-9 gather quantitative and documentary evidence, interviews with key informants; Months 10-12 analysis; Months 13-14 prepare reports and publications and disseminate outputs . Dissemination: We expect to have an impact on disaster planning nationally and internationally.

We will use a broad range of methods to communicate outputs including publication in peer reviewed journals, conference presentations, a study website, social media, written reports aimed at key stakeholders and the local community and other populations affected by Grenfell. We will carry out briefings and focussed meetings to present the results to all stakeholders.

We will present the results in written and oral form to the Ministry of Communities Housing and Local Government, NHSE, HEE, PHE and NICE, the national IAPT programme, the Metropolitan Police and the police and other first responder organisations nationally and to professional bodies.,