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News from other organisations and
the NHS
Care Quality Commission
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20 more reports from its review
of services for people with learning disabilities
The Care Quality Commission has published a
further
20 reports from a targeted programme of 150 unannounced
inspections of hospitals and care homes that care for people with
learning disabilities. Inspections were focused on two outcomes
relating to the care and welfare of people who use services and
safeguarding people who use services from abuse.
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2011 Patient Experience
Outpatient Survey shows information still needs to improve
Patients continue to report improvements in
aspects of care that matter most to them, and 84 per cent of
patients rated their experience as excellent or very good.The
2011 Patient Experience Outpatient Survey found that more
patients are being treated with respect and dignity and felt they
were involved in decisions about their care and treatment and in
the amount of information given to them about their treatment.
National Institute for Health and
Clinical Excellence
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Quality standard and guidance on
patient experience in NHS services
NICE has published a new
quality standard and
guidance on patient experience in adult NHS services. This
quality standard and accompanying clinical guidance aim to ensure
that patients have an excellent experience of care from the NHS and
ensure that patients are given the opportunity to discuss their
health beliefs, concerns and preferences in order to individualise
their care.
Over £100m to support clinical
research
Over £100m will be invested in
NHS Clinical Research Facilities to develop new treatments. The
money, provided by the National Institute for Health Research, will
be spent on research nurses and technicians at 19 of the facilities
around the country. A huge number of new treatments for conditions
including cancer, diabetes, stroke, dementia and obesity will be
developed by researchers at the facilities. Some of the funding
will also be used to conduct research into rare
diseases.
Mental Capacity Act Code of Practice
needs revising to enable more effective best interests decisions to
be made
The Mental Health Foundation, in partnership with the Norah Fry
Research Centre at the University of Bristol and the Centre for
Applied Social Research at the University of Bradford, have published a report calling for the
MCA Code of Practice to be revised to enable health and social
care staff to make more effective best interests
decisions.
News from Wales
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Older People’s Commissioner calls for
better protection for care home residents
Older People’s Commissioner for Wales has
called on the Welsh Government to review guidance to offer greater
protection for residents of care homes at risk of closure. The
report sets out how the current limitations should be
addressed and includes recommendations to increase access to
independent advocacy services for older people and fulfil the legal
duty to provide Independent Mental Capacity Advocates in certain
circumstances. The report also calls for good practice from Wales,
and elsewhere in the UK, to be included as part of the updated
guidance.
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Alcohol marketing messages getting
through to children in Wales
A new report from Alcohol Concern Cymru,
Making an impression, shows that children as young as 10 in
Wales are more familiar with some leading alcohol brands and
adverts than those for popular foods and snacks.
News from Scotland
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Scottish Government: Autism strategy in
action
Almost £300,000 of
funding has been awarded to 16 organisations around Scotland,
many working in partnership, to support the Scottish Government’s
autism strategy and to develop new support services for people with
autism and their families services in Scotland.
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See Me launches What's On
Your Mind? New Campaign for Young People
See me, Scotland’s national
campaign to end the stigma and discrimination of mental ill-health,
has launched What’s On Your
Mind? This is a new campaign aimed at 13-15 year
olds. This campaign consists of a short film and a teaching pack
filled with engaging activities designed to bring to life the
issues raised in the film, and to encourage young people to talk
about mental ill-health and stigma, and support peers who may be
experiencing it.
News from Northern Ireland
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Publication of the Children and
Young People’s Strategic Indicators updated March 2012
The
Children and Young People’s Strategic Indicators link to the
ten year strategy for children and young people, Our Children
and Young People – Our Pledge, published in 2006. The outcomes
are: healthy; economic and environmental well-being; enjoying,
learning and achieving; positive and valued contribution; living in
safety and stability. The purpose of the indicators is to measure
the success of the strategy over time.
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Sudden death guide launched
Health Minister Edwin Poots has launched a guide to help health
professionals offer support to those bereaved by the sudden death
of a loved one.
The Sudden Death: Guidance
at a Glance wall chart will help to support
individuals, families and communities at a particularly difficult
time, to enable bereaved people to understand their grief, cope
with their loss and to promote their well-being. The guide is
targeted towards families and friends, health and social care
professionals, Trusts, schools and other relevant
organisations.
Charities call for new public health body
to drive the integration of mental health and substance misuse
services
The new national body, Public Health England, will be
established in April 2012 to implement national public health
policy. The Centre for Mental Health, DrugScope and the UK Drug
Policy Commission are calling for a
greater degree of integration between services to support
people with a ‘dual diagnosis’ of mental illness and drug and
alcohol problems.
Group
parenting programmes help improve child conduct problems, parental
mental health and parenting skills
A
new review from the Cochrane Developmental, Psychosocial and
Learning Problems Group Behavioural and cognitive-behavioural
group-based parenting programmes for early-onset conduct problems
in children aged 3 to 12 years, assesses the effectiveness and
cost-effectiveness of behavioural and cognitive-behavioural
group-based parenting programmes for improving child conduct
problems, parental mental health and parenting skills.
Department of Health
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Too many young people "suffering in
silence" with mental health problems
Up to £22m will be pumped into a pioneering programme to give
children with mental health problems access to the best available
services in a wider range of places.
The new investment in the Children and Young People's IAPT
project will be spent over the next three years to expand
state-of-the-art psychological therapies and extend training for
people working with youngsters outside of health settings, such as
in schools or youth groups.
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Variations to the NHS Standard
Contracts
The
variations to the NHS Standard Contracts for 2010/11 and
2011/12 are now available. The NHS Standard Contract should be
used by commissioners when commissioning acute, mental health and
learning disability, community or ambulance Services. These
variations will bring these contracts in line with the requirements
of the 2012/13 NHS Operating Framework.
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Publication of Organisation Patient
Safety Incident data
The National Patient Safety Agency has
published the
Organisation Patient Safety Incident Report 2011. High levels
of incident reporting provide an indication of an increased safety
culture within the organisation.
Disability employment support
The Department of Work
and Pensions has published
Disability employment support: fulfilling potential.
It's the Government's response to the consultation on the
recommendation independent review ‘Getting in, staying in getting
on’ by Liz Sayce, Chief Executive of RADAR.
New
tools to help mental health professionals deal with physical
health
Rethink Mental Illness has launched a range of
new tools to help mental health
professionals address the physical health needs of the people they
work with. The tools have been developed as part of the 20 Years
Too Soon campaign, which aims to raise awareness of the fact that
people affected by severe mental illness die on average twenty
years younger than the general population, mostly as a result of
preventable physical conditions.
NHS
Confederation warns over risk to plans to improve mental health
The head of the NHS Confederation, Mike Farrar, has warned that
plans to improve the nation's mental health are at risk as the
basic building blocks are not yet in place to make them a success.
He spoke out one year on from the publication of the mental health
strategy No Health Without Mental Health. Mr Farrar is
clear that leaders of organisations offering NHS-funded care across
the system are up for the challenge, even in the face of increases
in demand as the economic situation remains gloomy and substantial
cuts to local authority services that the NHS relies on to keep
people out of hospitals.
Number
of rough sleepers on the rise
The Department for
Communities and Local Government has announced that the number of
rough sleepers has risen by almost a quarter, 23 per cent, between
autumn 2010 and 2011. London had 446 rough sleepers, the highest
number of all of the regions and 20 per cent of the national total
of 2,181. The South East and the South West had the next highest
numbers with 430 and 337 rough sleepers respectively. These three
regions between them had 56 per cent of the total of all rough
sleepers in England. In an accompanying statement,
Housing Minister Grant Shapps talked about how "non UK residents
now account for over half the rough sleepers in our capital."
Joseph
Rowntree Foundation: The right to take risks: service users' views
of risk in adult social care
People who use adult social care services
identify
different risks to those commonly identified by professionals
and policy-makers. Many fear losing independence, which suggests
that risk assessments need to have independence as their starting
point. There is a particular need to reach into mental health and
residential care services to find ways of enabling people to
realise their independence.
Lord
Layard's call for a Cabinet Minister for mental health
The government needs a
mental health minister at Cabinet level, said Labour peer
Richard Layard during a recent conference. He argued that it should
represent a "sixth pillar" of the welfare state and that it is all
too often overlooked by policy makers. Simon Lawton-Smith, from the
Mental Health Foundation responded by saying that the call for a
Cabinet Minister with cross-departmental responsibility for mental
health is not a new one. “Mental health is not simply an issue for
health and social care services. It is essential that mental health
policy is joined up across all Government Departments at cabinet
level. This is particularly so at a time of recession when there
are increasing pressures on people’s mental health and in light of
significant public service cuts.”
A model to quality assure psychological
expert witnesses
The quality of psychological experts and their reports,
presented at family court proceedings in the UK, show some
inconsistencies according to research carried out by the University
of Central Lancashire. Evaluating
Expert Witness Psychological Reports: Exploring Quality,
was part funded by the Family Justice Council as part of their
commitment to expert witness work and the continued review of
standards across all expert witnesses. Results of this study, the
first systematic quality evaluation of expert evidence of this
nature, indicate variability in report quality.
Mental
Health Heroes recognised
Mental health
organisation, mentalhealthy, and charities
SANE, the Mental Health Foundation, The Centre for Mental Health
and Emergence, have recognised the achievements of some of the
country’s
finest heroes, who selflessly and tirelessly look to improve
the lives of others. Categories include ‘Community Hero’,
‘Professional Hero’, ‘Business Hero’ and ‘Creative Hero’ and the
shortlist highlights some incredible local, national and even
global organisations and individuals. The award winners will be
announced 2 April 2012.
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