Personalised Care In Mental Health Group - What Research Is Needed?
Summary
The personalisation of adult social care is transforming the organisation and delivery of services to people with social care needs. It empowers people to make important decisions about their own care, such as who they employ to care for them and what they would like to purchase to improve their quality of life and well being.
Personalised care, facilitated by personal budgets, has the potential to improve the quality of life and well-being of people with mental health problems. The take-up of personal budgets is currently modest, but is expected to rise as health and social care funding streams become increasingly merged. It has the potential to challenge current models of service delivery, empowering users to make increased choices about their care which may be at odds with professional or societal views about what is ‘good for them’.
The development of personalised care in mental health is largely in the absence of a robust evidence base, although it has appeared in other guises in social work and other literatures. Some studies are being undertaken to start addressing this evidence gap, including a 3-year study funded by the Big Lottery and led by the research team in the mental health charity Rethink, exploring the individual and organisational implications of introducing personalised care for people with severe mental illness across four Local Authority sites. However, it is timely to initiate further national programmes to evaluate the effectiveness of personalised care for people with mental health problems, including its costs, risks and benefits, to develop what is currently a meagre evidence base.
A research group is being supported by the Mental Health Research Network to develop proposals which will answer a number of important questions, such as:
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How effective is personalised care for people with mental health problems in terms of costs, clinical, social and economic outcomes?
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What is the role of the third sector and peer support in delivering services funded by personal budgets?
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How can practitioners and service users manage the balance between opportunities and risk in personalised care?
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How can personal budgets be used most effectively in early intervention, crisis and recovery?
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What are the organisational arrangements, interpersonal dynamics and outcomes of proxy holders of personal budgets?
Please email Linda Parker your contact details if you would like to be kept informed about the work of the research group, and also if you have any suggestions for personalisation-related research topics
First Stakeholder Meeting
The first of two planned stakeholder meetings was held in Manchester on 13 December 2010. The core members were joined by users, carers and other practitioners with an interest in the field of personalised care in mental health. The purpose of the meeting was to generate research questions and to establish collaborative activity – which it did, very successfully.
Sarah Carr, Senior Research Analyst at the Social Care Institute for Excellence, set the context by providing a review of policy and research in the field.
Dr John Larsen, Head of Research and Evaluation at Rethink, followed this with a discussion of The People Study
A number of research priorities emerged from the meeting, with the following broad themes appearing to be the most popular:
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Early intervention
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Transitions
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Culture changes
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People and their relationships
To keep travel time and distance to a minimum, this first meeting invitation was targeted at colleagues in “the north”; so the next invitation will be extended to those in “the south” as the meeting will be in London (on 30 March 2011). if you would like to receive information about our second stakeholder meeting.
The full minutes of the meeting are available to view.
Who is involved?
As at June 2011, the core research group includes:
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Kate Baxter
(Research Fellow, SPRU, University of York)
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Sarah Carr
(Senior Research Analyst, Social Care Institute for Excellence)
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David Challis
(Professor of Community Care Research, University of Manchester)
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Michael Clark
(GP representing primary care, West Midlands Regional Development Centre)
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Tom Craig
(Professor of Community and Social Psychiatry, King’s College London)
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Fabian Davis
(Consultant psychologist, Oxleas NHS Foundation Trust)
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Caroline Glendinning
(Professor of Social Policy, University of York)
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Martin Knapp (Professor of Health Economics, King’s College London and Professor of Social Policy, London School of Economics and Political Science
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John Larsen
(Head of Research and Evaluation, Rethink)
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Jill Manthorpe
(Professor of Social Work, King’s College London)
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Ann Netten
(Professor of Social Welfare, University of Kent)
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Gillian Parker
(Professor of Social Policy Research, University of York)
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David Shiers
(GP advisor on early intervention in psychosis, National Mental Health Development Unit)
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Jerry Tew
(Senior Lecturer in Social Work, University of Birmingham)
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Martin Webber
(Lecturer in Social Work, King’s College London)
See also related information on the The School for Social Care Research
We would like your help in setting the priorities for the group by receiving your answers to these questions:
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What is the most important research question to answer in this area?
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Why is this important?
Please use
this online form to send us your replies.