What are the challenges to improving physical health care?

What are the challenges to improving physical health care? Request for staff and service-user feedback

 Improving physical health care for all service-users is both a national and a local priority. A physical health task and finish group has been set-up and is attended by staff with an interest in improving this aspect of care across the trust. Andria Hanbury (Associate for Evidence-Based Improvement) is pulling together a summary of the challenges to improving physical health care, as well as current trust activities aimed at improving physical health care. This information will be used to develop an evidence-based action plan aimed at improving physical health care across the trust.

 The challenges to improvement include those relating to health professionals and the system in which they work (for example, need for refresher training on physical health care), as well as those relating to service-users (for example, reluctance to attend appointments in primary care).To ensure we identify all of the main issues, so that we can start to address them in a systematic way, we are seeking your feedback.

 Please look at the diagram and let us know whether you feel we have captured the main challenges, and if not, what additional ones there are. There are no right or wrong answers: we are just interested in your feedback/opinions. Please leave a comment or send your feedback to Andria.hanbury@nhs.net by no later than 5^th May. Thank you to those who have already fedback on barriers from a service-user perspective’’

Free master classes for mental health and learning disability practitioners

Throughout June and July the University of Huddersfield are running a series of interactive master classes to improve the knowledge and skills of mental health and learning disability practitioners.

It is essential that practitioners are able to assess a person’s condition and undertake appropriate interventions in order to help the person manage their own wellbeing.

The following topics will be covered:

•  The Health Improvement Profile
• Intramuscular injections
• Oral health
• Epilepsy
• Diabetes
• Wound Care
• Alternative Therapies

Courses are free with the support of your NHS manager.

Further details and booking details are available here.

Listening to children – a role for mental health professionals

Here, Lindsay Britton introduces her role and outlines some of the key issues for mental health professionals in working with families and keeping children safe:

I would like to introduce myself, my name is Lindsay Britton and I am the Named Nurse for Safeguarding Children and Domestic Violence lead for Leeds and York Partnerships NHS Foundation Trust. My role includes being involved with serious case reviews and learning lessons reviews where children have been seriously harmed or died,  and domestic homicide reviews where adults have been killed due to domestic violence.  I attend the MARAC (multiagency risk assessment conference) for adults in high risk domestic abuse situations and we share information on our involvement and plan strategies to ensure their safety. I also ensure all staff are trained and provide advice and supervision.

Increasingly we are recognising the impact that adult mental health difficulties, substance misuse, learning disability or domestic violence can have on children in the family and I feel it is important to ensure the right support is in place to ensure the child’s needs are met. I think the emotional impact is very significant and the fact that many are young carers for their parent. I also believe that parents/carers can have these difficulties and still look after  their children excellently, but it is about having the right support at the right time, and this being recognised.

For our staff there is an increasing demand for them to engage with the children in the family and work with other agencies to assess and ensure the child’s needs are being met. This can be daunting for those only used to working with adults and we are working on improving our training to better equip staff.  This is not something we can get away from as it is not only very important that we ALL think about the child or adult at potential risk  but we are inspected on our engagement with children and joint working by both OFSTED and the Care Quality Commission.  Our senior staff who provide supervision need to ensure their supervisee’s are reflecting on their practice around their work with children and families.

As a parent accessing mental health services, what does this mean to you?

As a clinician, how might this influence your current practice?

What support do you need to be able to deliver this?

How can we all make sure we ‘hear’ what young people are telling us?

Here are some links that may be of interest in relation to parental mental health:

Mental Health Foundation – Parents

SCIE – Think child, think parent, think family: a guide to parental mental health and child welfare

Ofsted –What about the children? Joint working between adult and children’s services when parents or carers have mental ill health and/or alcohol problems

Talking to your child about mental health – Time to Change

Working Together 2013

Parents as Patients

Silent Voices