Mark Sheldon

(Via DH Website)

The millions of people who suffer from or might face mental illness at some point in their lives will be the focus of a new strategy, Care Services Minister Phil Hope announced today.

“New Horizons” is a new strategy that will promote good mental health and well-being, whilst improving services for people who have mental health problems. It will build on the National Service Framework for mental health – widely acknowledged as the catalyst for a transformation in mental health care over the last ten years – which comes to an end in 2009.

Full story here

Service user involvement in mental health research poses specific challenges for both researchers and service users.

The book describes the relevant background and principles underlying the concept of service user involvement in mental health research, providing relevant practical advice on how to engage with service users and how to build and maintain research collaboration on a professional level. It highlights common practical problems in service user involvement, based on experience from various countries with different social policies and suggests ways to avoid pitfalls and common difficulties.

(Via DH Website)

Following a commitment made in Valuing People Now and the accompanying Delivery Plan, published in January, we have released the Valuing People Now Resource Pack. This pack is intended to raise awareness of the issues and support good practice locally and across all sectors.

The pack includes the specially commissioned DVD, ‘Valuing People Now, real life stories’ which covers some of the key messages and priorities in Valuing People Now. It also contains new guidance on commissioning easy read information and the recently published Health Action Planning Guidance.

http://budurl.com/35w6

This project is supported financially by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, and is aimed at networking with of interested clinicians, academics from a variety of humanities-based disciplines and service users to develop an International Madness and Literature Network.

The Madness and Literature Network will examine the representation of madness in post-war British and American Fiction.

http://www.madnessandliterature.org

People with intellectual disabilities as bloggers

What’s social capital got to do with it anyway?

The concept of social capital, the socially constructed category of intellectual disability and the social practice of blogging may appear initially to be unconnected. In this study we report on an attempt to link the three as we examine the consequences of giving a group of people with intellectual disability supported access to the Internet and specifically to that section of cyberspace known as the `blogosphere’. Using the Social Capital Question Bank as a framework, we interrogate the data in an attempt to discover whether the qualities associated with successful inclusion within society might be available via the blogging community. Along the way we touch on issues related to policy, daily life and who or what counts as a friend.

Alex McClimens
Sheffield Hallam University, UK,

Frances Gordon
Sheffield Hallam University, UK

Journal of Intellectual Disabilities, Vol. 13, No. 1, 19-30 (2009)

A blog post on the NY Times site discussing evidence based medicine, with some interesting follow-up comments.

http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/04/02/the-ideology-of-health-care/

The latest version of Mental Health Today published by the National Mental Health Development Unit and can be found at http://www.its-services.org.uk/silo/files/new-agency-for-a-new-era.pdf

Good practice advice is aimed at commissioners in PCTs and local authorities who have responsibility for commissioning services for adults with ASC

This advice does not identify any new expectations or requirements but aims to bring existing information and good practice to the attention of commissioners so that they may enable, empower and promote independence and meaningful choices for adults with ASC.

As part of their commissioning programme the DH is also inviting people to register their interest in being involved in this process. Email address available on the DH site here

April sees a busy time of change in the health & social care sector and one of these changes sees the implementation today (April 1st) of the Deprivation of Liberty Safeguards

The essence of these safeguards require that if your service supports an incapacitated adult who lacks capacity and their care plan amounts to a deprivation of their liberty, a formal Authorisation must be sought from the local authority, if a care home; or PCT if the service is a hospital.

More information can be found on the DH website and relevant documentation and forms needed on the HMCS website

As mentioned previously in these pages the Care Quality Commission takes over as the new independent regulator of all health and adult social care in England.

This effectively means that the work of

• Mental Health Act Commission
• Healthcare Commission
• Commission for Healthcare Audit and Inspection (CHAI)
• Commission for Social Care Inspection (CSCI)

now falls to the new regulator.
More information can be found here http://www.cqc.org.uk/

You will remember that these bodies themselves replaced  the following organisations;

• Commission for Health Improvement (CHI)
• The Social Services Inspectorate (SSI)
• SSI/Audit Commission Joint Review Team
• The National Care Standards Commission (NCSC)

This took place under the Health and Social Care (Community Health and Standards) Act 2003
Additionally, don’t forget, (again as previously mentioned in this blog), that NIMHE & CSIP no longer exist as of today.

If one thing is certain, then its that all the above will again be replaced in the future.