Search results for ‘Subject term:"mental health problems"’ Sort:
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Mind your language – complexities in defining “dual diagnosis”
- Author:
- SMITH Martin
- Journal article citation:
- Addiction Today, 21(126), September 2010, pp.34-35.
- Publisher:
- Addiction Recovery Foundation
Professionals often feel isolated when dealing with patients with dual diagnosis, or complex needs. This can be made worse by different interpretations, leading to varying policies across agencies. The author assesses clinical and social issues to develop recommendations. The author suggests there are differences between evidence-based practice, law and social policies, leading to social exclusion of this population. Comprehensive education on the issues should facilitate change. This should be aimed at hospitals, GPs, mental health services, social services, employment services and other relevant services. A service would address substance misuse, risk, housing, social and economic issues, and must have the flexibility to adapt services to client needs. It is this inherent complexity that leaves professionals feeling isolated –adding clear lines of responsibility mitigating the problem.
Think child, think parent, think family: a briefing for senior managers
- Author:
- SOCIAL CARE INSTITUTE FOR EXCELLENCE
- Publisher:
- Social Care Institute for Excellence
- Publication year:
- 2010
- Pagination:
- 4p.
- Place of publication:
- London
This ‘At a glance’ summary is aimed at senior managers and presents key recommendations from the SCIE guide 'Think child, think parent, think family: a guide to parental mental health and child welfare'. The summary outlines the context, including lack of coordination of services, challenges for staff, financial restrictions and the growing change in policy direction towards supporting families and improving child health and wellbeing. It then makes key recommendations to improve services including taking a strategic multi-agency approach, leading cultural change, involving people who use services, embedding the whole-family approaches into quality systems, improving staff skills and knowledge and ensuring that information is gathered and made accessible. Experience at a number of pilot sites in local authorities in England and Northern Ireland highlights the importance of senior management involvement to the success of this approach.
A personal service
- Author:
- BOGG Daisy
- Journal article citation:
- Mental Health Today, September 2010, pp.13-15.
- Publisher:
- Pavilion
- Place of publication:
- Hove
The barriers to implementing personalisation in mental health services are discussed. The author comments that the progress towards personalised services for mental health service users has not been as speedy as it could have been. She argues that risk perception, service cultures and negotiating the health and social care divide are some of the key areas that are acting as barriers to wholesale implementation. The author suggests that for personalisation to really impact on the experiences of individuals who need support several things need to be addressed and considered. First, risk needs to be considered holistically, with a consideration of the risks the person faces as well as what they may pose. Second, there needs to be a shift in culture and thinking, and the presumption that individuals cannot make choices that are in their own best interests needs to be addressed. Stigma and discrimination have a negative impact on how mental health services operate. Third, there needs to be an awareness out in the practice context that personalisation is not just a social care initiative, but the responsibility of everyone across the community and public services.
Briefing note on establishing multi-agency protocols for responding to mental ill health and learning disabilities
- Author:
- NATIONAL POLICING IMPROVEMENT AGENCY
- Publisher:
- National Policing Improvement Agency
- Publication year:
- 2010
- Pagination:
- 5p.
- Place of publication:
- London
This briefing note is designed for police officers and staff when developing joint protocols with partner agencies to govern the response to people with mental ill health or learning disabilities. Multi-agency protocols help to ensure effective referrals and improved service delivery; they also contribute to the appropriate and efficient use of police resources and that of other agencies. Multi-agency protocols between the police and other agencies may need to cover situations that arise in a criminal justice capacity – where the person with mental ill health or learning disability is a victim of crime, a witness to crime or suspected of or known to have committed a crime. Also, situations arising in a health care capacity where police may be: acting in support of healthcare agencies dealing with someone experiencing a mental health crisis; supporting a person experiencing mental ill health until healthcare professionals are involved; responding to families and carers of people with mental ill health or learning disabilities who have concerns about them; and responding to members of the public seeking a service from the police in relation to suspected mental ill health or learning disabilities on the part of an individual.
Investigating the authorities
- Author:
- SHRUBB Richard
- Journal article citation:
- Mental Health Today, July 2010, pp.16-18.
- Publisher:
- Pavilion
- Place of publication:
- Hove
Over the last 4 years the Local Government Ombudsman has heard 5 cases of mentally ill people wrongly made bankrupt for not paying their council tax. All these bankruptcies were down to poor interdepartmental communication. While a social service department or housing officials knew that the person was vulnerable, another council official was taking them to court for non-payment. This article discusses the issue of poor communication between the social care and local taxation department, and considers ways to improve this communication. The article also discusses the severe mental health impairment exemption from council tax, arguing that the current definition of ‘a severe impairment of intelligence and social functioning’ is too stringent and needs to be redefined.
Parental mental health and child welfare - a young person's story
- Author:
- SOCIAL CARE INSTITUTE FOR EXCELLENCE
- Publisher:
- Social Care Institute for Excellence
- Publication year:
- 2010
- Place of publication:
- London
Of the 175,000 young carers identified in the 2001 census, 29 per cent – or just over 50,000 – were estimated to care for a family member with mental health problems (Dearden and Becker 2004). Not all children living with a parent with mental health problems will be carers but, for those that are, they can be involved in undertaking a variety of tasks including: advocacy, help with correspondence and bills, liaising with professionals, administering medicines, emotional support and domestic tasks. This film is about 18-year-old Cait who has been caring for her Mum since she was 7 years old. The film explores the importance of involving and assessing the needs of all family members from the outset. It describes Cait’s own experience of getting the support she needed and how agencies in Liverpool are working together to improve services for parents with mental health problems and their children.
Outcomes of interagency training to safeguard children: final report to the Department for Children, Schools and Families and the Department of Health
- Authors:
- CARPENTER John, et al
- Publisher:
- Great Britain. Department for Children, Schools and Families
- Publication year:
- 2010
- Pagination:
- 175p.
- Place of publication:
- London
This study assesses the scope and content of interdisciplinary training programmes commissioned by Local Safeguarding Children Boards (LSCB), and the participation in courses of professionals and others in contact with and/or working with children. It also aimed to investigate the context for training, specifically, how LSCBs carried out their responsibilities under the statutory guidance and the experiences of training coordinators and trainers. Individual chapters focus on different aspects of training, looking at: Safeguarding children and domestic abuse; Safeguarding disabled children; Parental mental illness and safeguarding children; Outcomes of interagency training for young people with harmful sexual behaviours; Safeguarding children of drug misusing parents; Female genital mutilation and safeguarding children. Each chapter begins with an overview of the literature and the importance of interagency working and training; and then provides provides a brief review of research, including methods used and results and outcomes. The conclusions highlight the policy and practice implications, looks at the cost effective implications and make suggestions for future research into interagency training for safeguarding children.
Housing services for adults with mental health needs
- Author:
- WALES AUDIT OFFICE
- Publisher:
- Wales Audit Office
- Publication year:
- 2010
- Pagination:
- 35p.
- Place of publication:
- Cardiff
A baseline review of adult mental health services in Wales, published in October 2005 by the Wales Audit Office, identified a number of issues in relation to the provision of housing for people with a mental health problem which needed to be addressed. This report examines whether the planning and delivery of housing services for adults with mental health needs has improved since the baseline review. Specifically, the report looks at: the progress that has been made in delivering the housing targets set out in Raising the Standard, the revised Adult Mental Health National Service Framework; whether the weaknesses identified by the 2005 baseline review in respect of assessing needs and joint planning between health, social care and housing authorities has improved; and how far housing services for people with mental health needs have improved on the ground. This report found that poor progress has been made in delivering the Assembly Government’s targets, strategic planning remains of poor quality, and joint planning between local health, social care and housing service providers was not always effective. The Assembly Government’s monitoring against the delivery of its housing targets has also been ineffective. Recommendations are provided.
Challenges in evaluating a ‘think child, think parent, think family’ approach to adult mental health and children’s services
- Author:
- ROSCOE Hannah
- Journal article citation:
- Research Policy and Planning, 28(2), 2010, pp.103-114.
- Publisher:
- Social Services Research Group
In 2009, the Social Care Institute for Excellence (SCIE) published a guide on parental mental health and child welfare, which makes recommendations about how services can better support families in which there is a parent with a mental health problem. This guide is based on a ‘think family’ approach, which requires effective interagency working between adult mental health and children’s services. This article discusses how the recommendations of the guide might be implemented. In September 2009, a project team at SCIE began working with 5 sites in England and 5 Health and Social Care Trusts in Northern Ireland to implement the guide and gather further learning about good practice and solutions to some of the barriers identified. The article considers the challenges of designing methods of evaluation in these sites, particularly in terms of how to define and measure the impact of implementation. It suggests that the concept of a ‘complex intervention’ is helpful in thinking about implementation of the guide in terms of allowing local flexibility, targeting multiple parts of the health and social care system and the range of possible outcomes of the work. In line with the principles of realist evaluation, a key role of the evaluation is to help further understand and map the intervention rather than simply to provide a summation of success or failure.
The role of inter-agency collaboration in facilitating receipt of behavioral health services for youth involved with child welfare and juvenile justice
- Authors:
- CHUANG Emmeline, WELLS Rebecca
- Journal article citation:
- Children and Youth Services Review, 32(12), December 2010, pp.1814-1822.
- Publisher:
- Elsevier
Unmet need for behavioural health care is a serious problem for crossover youth, defined as those simultaneously involved with the child welfare and juvenile justice systems. Although a large percentage of crossover youth are seriously emotionally disturbed, relatively few receive necessary behavioural health services. This paper examines the role of inter-agency collaboration in facilitating behavioural health service access for crossover youth. A study examined associations for 3 dimensions of collaboration between local child welfare and juvenile justice agencies (jurisdiction, shared information systems, and overall connectivity) and youths' odds of receiving behavioural health services. Data were drawn from the Child Protective Services (CPS) cohort of the National Survey of Child and Adolescent Well-Being (NSCAW). The results showed that having a single agency accountable for youth care increased youth odds of receiving outpatient and inpatient behavioural health services. Inter-agency sharing of administrative data increased youth odds of inpatient behavioural health service receipt. The article concludes that clarifying agency accountability and linking databases across sectors may improve service access for youth involved with both the child welfare and juvenile justice systems.