Relevant guidance and legislation:
RC Baldwin, Consultant Old Age Psychiatrist,
Manchester Mental Health Partnership
Arguably there has never been a time of such rapid change in the
NHS. It is very hard to keep up with the sheer volume of central
guidance and new legislation regarding the NHS, let alone the
parallel developments in social services.
Most services will be subject to re-configuration as a result of
legislation and guidance. It is therefore vital for clinicians to
keep up to date in order to be involved in discussions locally in
an informed way.
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This document is a précis of some recent and current central
directives that are most relevant to old age psychiatrists. It
serves as an aide memoir. It is not exhaustive.
For example, the Audit Commission Report Forget Me Not
has important recommendations regarding shifting the balance of
resources towards the community, supporting GP’s, co-ordinating
care and commissioning services but there is a separate report from
the Executive. There is also an Executive discussion paper
regarding the implementation of clinical governance.
Lastly, revision of the Mental
Health Act and related documents such as Who Decides? and
Making Decisions are not covered.
There is much more and much of it
on the internet. Many of the documents
described are listed as POINT documents and can be downloaded using
Adobe Acrobat Reader a pdf files; otherwise they are available from
HMSO offices locally.
Clinical
topics
The document is sub-divided by clinical topics. Those which are
well underway and/or well known are only outlined (eg some aspects
of governance); less well known or very new documents are given
more space. For example some important social care legislation is
perhaps less well known but important to old age psychiatrists.
- General strategy
- Partnership and re-configuration
- Governance
- Social Care
- Professional issues
- Information management &
technology
The views expressed in these pages are those of the author
and not The Royal College of Psychiatrists.