October 2006 email bulletin

18 October 2006

It's been a busy Summer - we have a new work focus, a new website and a new ebulletin to match.

Restructuring

Our restructuring is complete. We're now concentrating on employment for people with mental health problems and mental health care in the criminal justice system, while continuing to examine general mental health policy.

This means that you might not find our work relates directly to you any more. So if you don't want to continue to get these emails, let me know. But wait - we might have something to tempt you to stay...

Policy Watch

Since January we've been tracking mental health policy developments on our website. The Policy Watch section includes the most important new reports, statistics, comment and news that have an impact on mental health policy.

We thought that you might like to know about these things as it's not that easy to find such information in one place.

If you're happy to receive the ebulletin in this new format every month, please continue. Otherwise, let me know at katherine.hall@centreformentalhealth.org.uk. Any comments or suggestions would be appreciated. It's a work in progress!

Here are some examples of recent Policy Watch additions:

Policy Watch - Employment and Benefits

Discrimination in Employment

10 October 2006

Action on Stigma - The Department of Health has announced a three-year Action on Stigma initiative. It urges employers to sign up to a set of anti-stigma principles.

BT launches UK's Biggest employee mental health programme - BT has launched the UK's Biggest employee mental health programme to tackle problems such as anxiety, depression and stress in its workforce. The Work Fit - Positive Mentality campaign provides practical guidance to its employees on how to improve their mental health at work and at home.

Policy Watch - Financing Services

NHS organisations audited final accounts 2005/6

9 October 2006

The Department of Health has published a list of strategic health authorities and their organisations' audited final financial position for 2005/6. It shows which organisations registered a surplus, a deficit or broke even.

Policy Watch - Mental Health Services and Care

Healthcare Commission's NHS Ratings 2005 / 2006

12 October 2006

The Healthcare Commission's annual health check scores NHS trusts on many aspects of their performance, including the quality of the services they provide and how well they manage their finances and other resources. The 2005 / 2006 results are out now.

Choice in health care consultation response

6 October 2006

We have published our response to the consultation opened in Health Reform: Update and Commissioning Framework, published by the Department of Health on 13 July 2006.

Download our response to DH Choice consultation Word document (76 KB)

NIMHE/CSIP has more information on choice and the work they are undertaking on their choice website.

Choice in Mental Health Care briefing paper - Earlier this year we published a briefing paper on Choice in Mental Health Care. It finds that mental health and learning disability service users would like more opportunities to choose between different treatment, care and support options.

Community development workers for black and minority ethnic communities

5 October 2006

The Department of Health has published a letter to Strategic Health Authorities about Community Development Workers (CDWs). In the letter, Rosie Winterton, Minister of State for Health Services, says that: "services are discriminating in a way that is arguably both unethical and unlawful. Communities feel alienated from NHS services and many are deeply mistrustful of them. This fuels a vicious circle of fear that deters people from seeking help early in their illness."

Community Development examples - Our recent publication, Together We Will Change profiles examples of good practice in community development with BME communities. It shows how self-help approaches can enable local people to find their own solutions to mental distress and engage in active lives in their communities, moving on to education and employment.



Gaps in community mental health care

29 September 2006

The Healthcare Commission has today published its first national review of adult community mental health services. The review urges specialist community mental health services to improve access to talking therapies, out-of-hours crisis care and information for people who use services.

What we've been doing

There's more that you might want to know about:

New Policy Paper - We've been working on a policy paper on the Costs of Race Inequality.

It examines the financial costs of the differences in specialist mental health service use among people from different ethnic groups in London. It concludes that the Government's drive to reduce discrimination in mental health services could free up millions of pounds to invest in better services for African and Caribbean people. You can also read our press release about it.

It's £5 for a nice paper copy but free to download as a PDF.

Diagnostic tools - There are now some helpful validated tools for diagnosing mental health problems on our website. They are aimed at primary care professionals and the questionnaires are sufficiently user friendly to be used during routine consultations.

Free publications - We've been busy scanning our older publications to make free PDF copies. So have a look at our publications section for free copes of Acute Problems, Have we got views for you, Active Outreach, and The Mental Health Service User Movement in England amongst many others.

Coming soon

There are more irons in the fire too. Although we've stopped working in these areas, we still have valuable information to pass on.

So there are two new guides coming this Autumn - A practical guide to crisis resolution and home treatment and A guide to User-Focused Monitoring.

Next ebulletin

The next ebulletin will be in November and will include the launch of a major Talking Therapies report, more Policy Watch and how you can get our new publications.

Best wishes,

Katherine Hall

Website Editor

Direct line: 020 7827 8376

Email: katherine.hall@centreformentalhealth.org.uk