Your chance to shape community mental health services
If you work with people who use community mental health services, NHS England would like your help in hearing from them. It is inviting FaithAction members (through the Health and Wellbeing Alliance) to ask their service users to feed into the development of national policy work around community mental health services, in order to help fill some gaps, focusing on underrepresented groups (such as older people, LGBT people and adults with physical disabilities) as well as specific elements of community mental health provision.
In particular, NHS England is looking to better understand what people, and underrepresented groups specifically, want from the process of care coordination and care planning – also taking into account the potential role of digital technology. This will inform its work around the future of the Care Programme Approach and how it could be (co-)redesigned to improve community mental health care.
It has developed an online questionnaire for people to use to share their feedback. Please complete this by 30 June 2018.
Definition of terms used in the survey
Care coordination: Care coordination looks at the way care activities are organised for a person who requires mental health care and support to live well and independently. This includes identifying and managing the professionals and resources that are required to deliver care and support, as well as enabling effective communication between all professionals and agencies involved so that the care the person receives is as seamless as possible. This should be completed with the person, their family and carers and/or independent advocate (as appropriate) and those involved in the person’s care to ensure that the delivery of care and support is appropriate for the person.
A care coordinator is the person who is responsible for bringing together the different professionals who are involved in a person’s care and support. They will also jointly develop care plans with a person, their family/carer and/or independent advocate (as appropriate), and work with the care team to evaluate the care that is delivered. A care coordinator is usually by background a qualified social worker or community psychiatric nurse (CPN).
Care planning: care planning is a collaborative process where the person needing care and support, their family and/or carer and/or independent advocate (as appropriate), and their care coordinator work together to identify and agree the person’s goals, identify support needs, develop and implement action plans, and monitor progress. This is a planned and continuous process, not a one-off event, which is recorded in a care plan.
Transition: The process by which people with health or social care needs move between services. This might be between a psychiatric hospital and the community and/or GP services, between health services and social care services, from child and adolescent services to adult services, or from adult services to older adult services. The transition process should be planned carefully, in collaboration with the person, their family/carers and/or independent advocate, to ensure there are no gaps in the care and support that is received.
