Funding awarded to 6 projects to test models that improve access to health services for people with both mental ill health and drug and alcohol dependency needs.
Over the past six months, the Trailblazer project has been working with ten ‘early adopter’ schools whilst establishing four new Mental Health Support Teams which will work closely with the 72 schools in the programme.
A Pre-admission Suite (PAS) at a south London mental and community health trust has now closed, following a Care Quality Commission focused inspection in August 2019.
CQC undertook the inspection following concerns received about the length of
time patients stayed in Oxleas NHS Foundation Trust’s PAS and complaints from patients and relatives.
In this series of case studies, we highlight what providers have done to take a flexible approach to staffing.
The case studies show different ways of organising services. They focus on the quality of care, patient safety, and efficiency, rather than just numbers and ratios of staff.
They illustrate how providers have redesigned services to make the best use of the available range of skills and disciplines. Or they found new ways to work with others in the local health and care system.
Open access. The Floresco integrated service model was designed to address the fragmentation of community mental health treatment and support services. Floresco was established in Queensland, Australia, by a consortium of non-government organisations that sought to partner with general practitioners (GPs), private mental health providers and public mental health services to operate a ‘one-stop’ mental health service hub.
Towns with high rates of homelessness are set for investment in specialist mental health care, as part of NHS services for rough sleepers across the country.
The NHS-funded services in seven parts of the country will bring in new psychiatrists, psychologists and other experts to offer homeless people advice and treatment to tackle underlying mental ill health.
EDITORIAL. To read the full article, log in using your NHS Athens details. To access full-text: click “Log in/Register” (top right hand side). Click ‘Institutional Login’ then select 'OpenAthens Federation', then ‘NHS England’. Enter your Athens details to view the article.
The transitional discharge model (TDM) bridges hospital discharge and community living for people receiving psychiatric services. TDM, based on Peplau's theory of interpersonal relations, ensures continued support from hospital staff until a therapeutic relationship is established with community providers and formal peer support.. To read the full article, log in using your NHS Athens details. To access full-text: click “Log in/Register” (top right hand side). Click ‘Institutional Login’ then select 'OpenAthens Federation', then ‘NHS England’. Enter your Athens details to view the article.
A psychological treatment service working in GP surgeries in Nottingham offers hope to people other services can’t help and has already saved more money than its staffing costs in its first year, according to research published today by Centre for Mental Health with the NHS Confederation Mental Health Network.
A new approach to complex needs, by Nick O’Shea, reports on the Primary Care Psychological Medicine service in Rushcliffe. The service offers psychological interventions to people who have high levels of unexplained or persistent physical symptoms of illness. Persistent physical symptoms can be painful, life-limiting and distressing. This can mean multiple GP appointments, outpatient visits and emergencies.
The Community Mental Health Framework describes how the Long Term Plan’s vision for a place-based community mental health model can be realised, and how community services should modernise to offer whole-person, whole-population health approaches, aligned with the new Primary Care Networks.
xtended appointments with mental health experts from the NHS, social care and specialist third sector organisations, plus access to therapies, physical health checks and pharmacists, are just some of the wider expertise patients will be able to access in their local GP practice and in the community under new ways of working. Patients will be able to explore the situation affecting their wellbeing – whether that is an ongoing mental or physical health problem, loneliness, debt, or other issues. They can then be guided to appropriate resources that may help, including talking therapies, benefits advice, or an introduction to a local community group.
Updated policy on delivering same-sex accommodation for all providers of NHS-funded care to ensure the safety, privacy and dignity of patients is prioritised.
Sally McManus writes her debut elf blog on a recent national cohort study of multiple adverse outcomes following first discharge from psychiatric care.
This report examines the current landscape of data-driven technologies and their applications in mental healthcare, highlighting areas where these tools offer the most potential for the NHS and its patients.
A new NHS service has launched to help people with learning disabilities and/or autism moving back into the community from a forensic hospital.
The Forensic Outreach Liaison Service (FOLS) supports people aged 18 years and above who have a learning disability or autism (or both) that are at risk of or have come in to contact with the criminal justice system or been admitted to a secure hospital setting.
BPS Blog post by Lucy Maddox. The UK population continues to grow, while nursing numbers have remained static for several decades. Compounding matters, The King’s Fund and Nuffield Trust have reported a 25 per cent increase in nurses and midwives leaving the NHS from 2012 to 2018, from 27,300 to 34,100. In short, in the UK, we now have far fewer nurses relative to the general population than we used to.
What does this mean for patients’ care experience?
The Irish national mental health service provider commissioned a national training programme to support a patient and public involvement (PPI) initiative in mental health services. The programme evaluation afforded an opportunity to describe the learning gains and learning enablers and the factors that support PPI in mental health.
Aim: We aimed to evaluate a PPI training programme across nine regional administrative units in a national mental health service.. To read the full article, log in using your NHS Athens details. To access full-text: click “Log in/Register” (top right hand side). Click ‘Institutional Login’ then select 'OpenAthens Federation', then ‘NHS England’. Enter your Athens details to view the article.
This statistical release makes available the most recent Improving Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT) monthly and quarterly data, including activity, waiting times, and outcomes such as recovery.
IAPT is run by the NHS in England and offers NICE-approved therapies for treating people with depression or anxiety.
This statistical release makes available the most recent Improving Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT) monthly and quarterly data, including activity, waiting times, and outcomes such as recovery. It also makes available, for the first time, additional experimental statistics about a pilot programme for integrated IAPT services.
Open access. Service providers throughout Europe have identified the need to define how high-quality community-based mental health care looks to organize their own services and to inform governments, commissioners and funders. In 2016, representatives of mental health care service providers, networks, umbrella organizations and knowledge institutes in Europe came together to establish the European Community Mental Health Services Provider (EUCOMS) Network. This network developed a shared vision on the principles and key elements of community mental health care in different contexts. The result is a comprehensive consensus paper, of which this position paper is an outline.
With this paper the network wants to contribute to the discussion on how to improve structures in mental healthcare, and to narrow the gap between evidence, policy and practice in Europe.
Transition between Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) and Adult Mental Health Services (AMHS) can be stressful for the young person and family alike. Previous reviews have focused on specific aspects of transition or perspectives of young people, or have not used systematic approaches to data identification and analysis. The objective of this review was to develop the understanding of the transition between CAMHS and AMHS by systematically identifying and synthesising evidence regarding professionals’ and parents/carers’ perspectives.. To read the full article, log in using your NHS Athens details. To access full-text: click “Log in/Register” (top right hand side). Click ‘Institutional Login’ then select 'OpenAthens Federation', then ‘NHS England’. Enter your Athens details to view the article.
Open access. Concerns are recurrently expressed that the therapeutic content of in-patient care is limited and lacking clear guidance. The perspectives of patients and staff regarding therapeutic priorities for psychiatric in-patient care have been little explored and compared.
More than 50,000 people have taken charge of their own care after being handed control of how their NHS funding is spent.
Personal Health Budgets can be used to purchase personalised wheelchairs, assistance dogs and respite care to manage complex health problems, as well as tech devices that can control curtains, lighting, heating and door intercoms to help people live independent lives.
The rollout of the Budgets across the country is two years ahead of scheme and being ramped up further as part of the NHS Long Term Plan.
New figures published today by NHS England and Improvement show 54,143 people with long-term health problems, including disabled people and those with long-term physical and mental health conditions, are currently benefiting from them.
Safe staffing and coercive practices are of pressing concern for mental health services. These are inter‐dependent and the relationship is under‐researched.. To read the full article, log in using your NHS Athens details. To access full-text: click “Log in/Register” (top right hand side). Click ‘Institutional Login’ then select 'OpenAthens Federation', then ‘NHS England’. Enter your Athens details to view the article.
This resource was commissioned by NHS England to support delivery of the Five Year Forward View for Mental Health and the NHS Long Term Plan. A service that has been commissioned based on the principles of co-production is more likely to be cost-effective, responsive and have high satisfaction and health outcome rates from people using it.
Anne Longfield, the Children’s Commissioner for England, is today publishing a new report, ‘Far less than they deserve: Children with learning disabilities or autism living in mental health hospitals’. The report shows how too many children are being admitted to secure hospitals unnecessarily – in some cases are spending months and years of their childhood in institutions when they should be in their community. It warns that the current system of support for those with learning disabilities or autism is letting down some of the most vulnerable children in the country.
Open access. The Frequent Attenders Programme is a joint initiative between Hertfordshire Rapid Assessment, Interface and Discharge service and the Emergency Department of the West Hertfordshire NHS Trust, which aims to divert frequent attenders from the emergency department by addressing their unmet needs. This paper describes the range of interventions put in place from the time that the service was set up in 2014 until the introduction of the new national Commissioning for Quality and Innovation 2017–2019, which tasked National Health Service trusts to improve services for people with mental health needs who present to Accident and Emergency. The terms emergency department and Accident and Emergency are used interchangeably, reflecting the practice in policy documents. A subsequent article will report on the impact of the Commissioning for Quality and Innovation in Hertfordshire.
Open access. There are increasing calls to make mental health and substance use services youth friendly, with hopes of improving service uptake, engagement and satisfaction. However, youth-friendliness in this area has not been clearly defined and there is a lack of information about the characteristics that make such services youth friendly. The purpose of this scoping review was to examine the literature available on youth-friendly mental health and substance use services in order to identify the characteristics, outline the expected impacts, and establish a definition.
The Trust was successful in its bid for funding from NHS England for the Individual Placement and Support (IPS) scheme, and will be recruiting employment specialists and an IPS team leader for the core and enhanced teams in Calderdale.
Service users who want paid work can be referred directly by their doctor or another mental health professional, and can also self-refer.
Employment specialists find suitable jobs matched to a person’s skills and interests, offer coaching around finding a job and preparing for interviews whilst providing tailored ongoing support when the person is in work. They can also speak to employers directly alongside the service user to identify well-suited roles – acting as a crucial link between patient, their employer and their clinical team.
How a service for young people in North Yorkshire works with other agencies to focus on all their emotional wellbeing, substance misuse and mental health needs.
How joining up mental health, alcohol and drug misuse services in a Derby hospital provided better support for people with addiction and mental health problems.
COMMENTARY ON: Robson D, Spaducci G, McNeill A, et al. Effect of implementation of a smoke-free policy on physical violence in a psychiatric inpatient setting: an interrupted time series analysis. Lancet Psychiatry 2017;4,540–6.. To read the full article, log in using your MPFT NHS OpenAthens details.
Open access. Involving mental health service users in planning and reviewing their care can help personalised care focused on recovery, with the aim of developing goals specific to the individual and designed to maximise achievements and social integration. We aimed to ascertain the views of service users, carers and staff in acute inpatient wards on factors that facilitated or acted as barriers to collaborative, recovery-focused care.
Open access. The move to community support for all people with intellectual disabilities is an aspiration with international significance. In this article, we draw on rich accounts from women with intellectual disabilities detained under the Mental Health Act (E&W) 1983 and staff at an National Health Service secure setting in England to explore how “moving on” is defined and perceived.
The Care Quality Commission has rated the care being provided by MOSAIC to be Outstanding after an inspection in January 2019.
MOSAIC is a substance misuse service operated by Stockport Metropolitan Borough Council and provides support and treatment for people with drug and alcohol issues, as well as support for young people whose parents misuse substances.
Anne Longfield, the Children’s Commissioner for England, is today (Wednesday) publishing a report looking at the amount spent on “low-level” mental health support for children in England. “Low-level” mental health services are preventative and early intervention services for treating problems like anxiety and depression or eating disorders, such as support provided by school nurses or counsellors, drop-in centres or online counselling services. These services are vital for offering early help to children suffering from mental health problems and can often prevent conditions developing into much more serious illnesses.
New and expectant mothers across the country can now access specialist mental health care in the area where they live, NHS England announced today.
The landmark rollout of specialist perinatal community services across the whole of England, means that mums and mums-to-be who are experiencing anxiety, depression or other forms of mental ill health should be able to access high quality care much closer to home.
There has been an increasing interest in the concept of value-based health care and how resources are allocated to improve outcomes. However, measuring outcomes in mental health services is often complex and fraught with difficulty, with professionals and service users often having very different perspectives on the nature of mental illness and the role of services in addressing it.
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A new report by NHS Providers reveals deep disquiet among NHS mental health trust leaders about a substantial care deficit resulting from the impact of growing social and economic hardship in their communities.
Mental health services: Addressing the care deficit looks at the levels of demand reported by frontline leaders across the range of services they provide, and examines what lies behind the growing pressures.
The Hub will help inform and guide people and services who deliver or would like to deliver peer support. As well as having high quality academic literature and ‘grey’ literature on the Hub, users can add their own resources through the Hub’s community upload function.
This statistical release makes available the most recent Improving Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT) monthly and quarterly data, including activity, waiting times, and outcomes such as recovery.
IAPT is run by the NHS in England and offers NICE-approved therapies for treating people with depression or anxiety.
Busy emergency departments (EDs) are not the optimum environment for assessment of patients in mental health crisis. The Psychiatric Decisions Unit (PDU) was developed by the Birmingham and Solihull Mental Health Foundation Trust as an enhanced assessment service to ensure patients in mental health crisis receive optimal care.. To read the full article, log in using your NHS OpenAthens details.
Open access. Research into termination of long-term psychosocial treatment of mental disorders is scarce. Yearly 25% of people in Dutch mental health services receive long-term treatment. They account for many people, contacts, and costs. Although relevant in different health care systems, (dis)continuation is particularly problematic under universal health care coverage when secondary services lack a fixed (financially determined) endpoint. Substantial, unaccounted, differences in treatment duration exist between services. Understanding of underlying decisional processes may result in improved decision making, efficient allocation of scarce resources, and more personalized treatment.
Busy emergency departments (EDs) are not the optimum environment for assessment of patients in mental health crisis. The Psychiatric Decisions Unit (PDU) was developed by the Birmingham and Solihull Mental Health Foundation Trust as an enhanced assessment service to ensure patients in mental health crisis receive optimal care.- Mental Elf Blog post.
During 2018, stakeholders from the health and social care system, and the charitable sector, were asked to comment on the progress of the actions set out in the Challenge on dementia 2020 implementation plan and what else needed to be done to complete them.
This report summarises the responses and sets out revised actions for 2018 to 2020.
A new report by the Health Foundation highlights that NHS staff numbers are failing to keep pace with demand and that there is ongoing deterioration in workforce numbers in critical areas such as primary and community care, nursing and mental health.
Wakefield child and adolescent mental health services (CAMHS) have been delivering supportive sessions in schools.
The team works with professionals within local schools to offer consultations to develop a further understanding of young people’s emotional wellbeing, and to enable staff to talk about mental health concerns directly with parents. The sessions develop skills and provide resources to staff which can be used with other children they work with and reduce overall demand on mental health services.
Wakefield CAMHS also offer direct support to individual children and young people in school, offering information and guidance on topics such as anxiety, self-esteem, anger management, understanding emotions, bereavement, stress, and exam management.
Alongside this, they offer group sessions covering topics such as exam stress, mindfulness, and transitioning to secondary school.
Open access. Smoking has played a significant role in the historical culture of mental healthcare settings. Mental health professionals (MHPs) often hold dismissive attitudes regarding the importance of smoking cessation in the context of mental healthcare. In 2007, English mental health inpatient buildings were required by law to become smoke-free, and healthcare trusts have more recently begun to implement comprehensive policies (i.e. smoke-free grounds and buildings) and staff training in response to national guidance. It is therefore important to explore MHPs practice around smoking, smoking cessation, and smoke-free policy adherence. This study aimed to explore these issues by using the COM-B (capability, opportunity, motivation, behaviour) model to systematically identify barriers to, and facilitators for, MHPs addressing smoking with their patients.
Open access. Recent qualitative research suggests that changes to the way eligibility for welfare payments is determined in the UK may be detrimental to claimants with mental illnesses. No large-scale analysis has been undertaken to date.
Personalised Care will benefit up to 2.5 million people by 2024, giving them the same choice and control over their mental and physical health that they have come to expect in every other aspect of their life. This document confirms how we will do this by 2023/24. It is the action plan for the rolling out personalised care across England.
It is generally acknowledged that small, rural NHS health care providers face higher costs than larger, urban areas. For a number of years the NHS has adjusted financial allocations to account for these unavoidable variations in costs in different parts of the country. However, our review for the National Centre for Rural Health and Care suggests these adjustments may not be compensating enough to avoid some rural trusts facing increased difficulties.
Problem drinkers and smokers who end up in hospital will be helped by dedicated new services as part of the NHS Long Term Plan.
As part of new NHS prevention measures, people who are alcohol dependent will be helped by new Alcohol Care Teams, while more than half a million patients who smoke, including pregnant women and their partners will also be helped to stop, in a new drive that will see all smokers admitted to hospital encouraged to quit.
This statistical release makes available the most recent Improving Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT) monthly and quarterly data, including activity, waiting times, and outcomes such as recovery. It also makes available, for the first time, additional experimental statistics about a pilot programme for integrated IAPT services.
Open access. Many people diagnosed with schizophrenia, bipolar or other psychoses in England receive the majority of their healthcare from primary care. Primary care practitioners may not be well equipped to meet their needs and there is often poor communication with secondary care. Collaborative care is a promising alternative model but has not been trialled specifically with this service user group in England. Collaborative care for other mental health conditions has not been widely implemented despite evidence of its effectiveness. We carried out a formative evaluation of the PARTNERS model of collaborative care, with the aim of establishing barriers and facilitators to delivery, identifying implementation support requirements and testing the initial programme theory.
This is an ambitious plan that includes a number of commitments which – if delivered – will improve the lives of many people. NHS leaders should be applauded for focusing on improving services outside hospitals and moving towards more joined-up, preventative and personalised care for patients. But some significant pieces of the jigsaw are still missing, and there should be no illusions about the scale of the challenge ahead.
The NHS Long Term Plan has been launched and long it indeed is, in every sense of the word, clocking in at a weighty 120 pages. Here’s my take on the top five things you need to know.
We've added 10 new Be Aware updates following your suggestions:
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Professor Steve Field, Chief Inspector of Primary Medical Services and Integrated Care, said: “Our review of health and social care services in the county found that older people had varied experiences of health and social care services. There were variations in what was available to them depending on where they lived, which meant that people’s experiences of care and the support they received were inconsistent.
The Care Quality Commission has published its findings following a review of health and social care services in Leeds.
This report is one of a number of targeted local system reviews looking specifically at how older people move through the health and social care system, with a focus on how services work together.
COMMENTARY ON: Robson D, Spaducci G, McNeill A, et al. Effect of implementation of a smoke-free policy on physical violence in a psychiatric inpatient setting: an interrupted time series analysis. Lancet Psychiatry 2017;4,540–6.. To read the full article, log in using your NHS OpenAthens details.
Open access. Peer-review networks aim to help services to improve the quality of care they provide, however, there is very little evidence about their impact. We conducted a cluster randomized controlled trial of a peer-review quality network for low-secure mental health services to examine the impact of network membership on the process and outcomes of care over a 12 month period.
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Researchers continue to build on findings from NIMH’s Recovery After an Initial Schizophrenia Episode (RAISE) program, which investigated the effectiveness of early intervention services for people experiencing first episode psychosis. Two recent studies add to the evidence that team-based early intervention services are feasible in real-world health care settings and result in improved outcomes for patients.
Sonia Johnson and Bryn Lloyd-Evans reflect on the NIHR Mental Health Policy Research Unit contribution to the Independent Review of the Mental Health Act.
Thousands of Londoners experiencing a mental health crisis will be sent a specialist nurse and a paramedic in a car on blue lights.
By responding together, the specialist ambulance crew is expected to reduce mental health hospital admissions from 58,000 to 30,000 per year once it is rolled out across the capital.
A highly innovative children’s hospital for the east of England has been given the go ahead today by Health Secretary Matt Hancock.
Up to £100 million of public capital has been made available for a completely new facility that is purpose-built to meet the needs of the region’s youngest patients. It will integrate mental and physical health and provide the highest quality services with ground breaking science and research.
Built on land adjacent to Addenbrooke’s Hospital and The Rosie Hospitals in Cambridge, the children’s hospital will bring together some of the world’s top scientists to explore new ways of diagnosing and treating some of the most challenging diseases of childhood.
The Healthcare Safety Investigation Branch (HSIB) has today published its latest report highlighting the variation in mental health care across emergency departments and setting out four recommendations aimed at improving patient care.
Police officers are increasingly being used as the service of default in responding to people with mental health problems, a report by Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services has confirmed.
THE first-ever national guidance for NHS mental health trusts to ensure ways of improving services are learned from patients’ deaths is unveiled today.
The guidance, drawn up by the Royal College of Psychiatrists (RCPsych), focuses on patients with severe mental illness and on four ‘red-flag’ scenarios, including where concerns have been raised by families and carers or where patients have experienced psychosis or had an eating disorder.