CPA News

A Good Practice Guide for Commissioners, CPA Care Coordinators and Independent Sector Providers’

Find attachments giving information about the Healthcare Commission’s acute inpatient mental health service review, which starts in June 2007. The scope of the review covers all mental health provider trusts, including health and social care trusts, foundation mental health trusts and primary care trusts that provide specialist mental health services. Visit...

...for more information.

Parents with mental health problems and their children

This Department of Health and Social Care Institute for Excellence briefing summarises why it is important to address the needs of parents with mental health problems and ensure that they and their children receive support. It describes the potential of the Care Programme Approach (CPA) to improve outcomes for affected families. The new CPA guidance recommends that the needs of the parent, the child and the family are assessed routinely at each stage of the care pathway from referral to review. Service activity data should be recorded, collected and used to inform local commissioning, reviewing eligibility criteria for access to assessment and services, as well as professional training and development. In addition, this briefing also references key related policy, guidelines, practice developments and further reading.

Mental Health National Service Framework Autumn Assessment 2005

Summary of Key Findings

As part of the 2005 National Service Framework (NSF) Autumn Assessment, the Department of Health (DH) and the National Institute for Mental Health in England (NIMHE), part of the Care Services Improvement Partnership (CSIP), asked Local Implementation Teams (LITs) to produce a Themed Review of choice in mental health services.

CSIP Regional Development Centres, Strategic Health Authority (SHA) Mental Health Leads, and Primary Care Trusts supported this review. Throughout the autumn of 2005, local and regional ‘walk-through’ events were held to support local mental health communities in meetings to consider the content of their reports.

Final reports were submitted to CSIP in December 2005.

Healthcare Commission Report — Published: 3rd September 2007

Community mental health services show improvements, but concerns remain over social inclusion and access to counselling

Users of community mental health services say there have been some improvements in their care, according to a Healthcare Commission survey published today (Monday 3 September 2007).

The relationships between service users and their psychiatrists continue to improve year–on–year. Meanwhile, a greater proportion of those with more complex mental health needs know who their care co–ordinator is and are being offered copies of their care plan.

Access to out of hours crisis care via telephone has improved markedly in the past year. Last year only 49% of service users said they had an emergency contact number. This has risen to 52%, with the vast majority getting through to someone within an hour.

Find an attachment spreadsheet, giving the results of the Healthcare Commission, ‘Count Me In Census 2006’ In-patient Census, showing:
The CPA (Care Programme Approach) Level by ‘ethnic category total numbers’ and the ‘CPA Level by category percentage’.

For more information visit the Healthcare Commission website.

Published: 6 December 2007

Rates of admission and detention remain high for some black and minority groups using mental health and learning disability services

A multi-agency response is required to address the needs of service users

The findings from a census of the ethnicity of inpatients in mental health and learning disability services are published Thursday 6 Dec 07.

The figures continue to show that some black and minority ethnic groups are three or more times more likely than average to be admitted as inpatients in mental health and learning disability services.

The report notes that research has shown some ethnic groups have significantly higher rates of mental illness. Differences in rates of mental illness and pathways to hospital admission are caused by numerous and complex factors such as socio-economic factors, living alone and family and social support.

This paper has been commissioned by the Department of Health, Care Programme Approach Review Group.

The paper presents:

• a functional map for the care co-ordination task; and,
• National Occupational Standards (NOS) which underpin these functions.

The functional map and associated NOS may be used to inform the implementation of Care Programme Approach (CPA) policy, including:

• the development of local protocols and procedures to support the implementation of CPA;
• role review and (re)design;
• the development of job descriptions, and recruitment processes;
• performance assessment, supervision and appraisal;
• skills review, to identify and inform continuing professional development needs and planning;
• training and education commissioning and delivery;
• curricula development;
• performance management; and
• service commissioning.

Method

Three key tasks were carried out to produce the functional map and associated competences. They were,

• a desktop review of literature and key policies and National Occupational Standard suites (Appendix 1);
• identification of the core functions of the care co-ordination role, and associated functional statements; and
• mapping competences against key functions, using the Skills for Health Competence Clusters tool.1

The DoH have released two documents (March 2008), following their review of the CPA The first is a booklet entitled,"Making the CPA work for you", a guide for service users and cares on the Care Programme Approach. The second document is an accompanying leaflet of the same name with the additional sub-heading, "It is not about how you fit into services - It is about how services fit with you. A DVD is also available from the Department of Health.

The publications are introduced as:

A Booklet and summary leaflet for service users on the Care Programme Approach: the process of how mental health services assess users' needs, plan ways to meet them and check that they are being met. Users should always feel able to ask mental health workers to explain this process clearly.