This document updates Council Report CR110:
Caring for People
who enter Old Age with Enduring or Relapsing Mental Illness
(‘Graduates’). It has been produced by a working party
including representatives from the Faculties of Old Age Psychiatry,
General and Community Psychiatry, and Rehabilitation Psychiatry,
from the Faculty of Old Age Psychiatry Consumer Group and a Mental
Health Nurse.
The Report makes a series of recommendations
aimed at improving the care of people who are growing old with
enduring or relapsing mental illness and who face the possibility
of moving between psychiatric services, most commonly from general
and community (or rehabilitation) psychiatry to the psychiatry of
old age.
The recommendations fall into six main
areas:
- The use of transition
protocols
- Assessment
- The process of transition
- The care plan
- Monitoring
- Commissioning
Making the transition between services can be
a difficult and worrying time for users and their families.
Organisations are advised to consider these recommendations, which
have been produced after wide debate to which many people have
contributed, and to review their policies and procedures in order
to try to improve the experiences of families using their
service.