New Ways of Working in Mental Health
Professor Louis Appleby today launched two new resources to help build a more flexible and skilled mental health workforce.
Talking at the ‘New Ways of Working in Mental Health’ national conference, the National Director for Mental Health unveiled ‘New ways of working for everyone’ - a report aimed at all mental health staff that looks at ways they can work more flexibly within teams.
Produced by the National Institute for Mental Health in England (NIMHE) National Workforce Programme, the report builds on previous guidance and promotes a model where ‘distributed responsibility’ is shared amongst team members and no longer be delegated by a single professional such as the consultant.
Download:
- Mental Health: New Ways of Working for Everyone
- New Ways of Working with you: Information for users and carers
This cultural shift in services will mean that people with the most experience and skills will work face to face with people who have the most complex needs. More experienced staff will then support other staff to take on less complex or more routine work. All qualified staff will be able to extend the boundaries of what they do (i.e. non medical prescription) and there will be more chances for new roles such as support time and recovery workers (STR), primary care mental health workers and assistant practitioners to take their places within teams.
The report acknowledges the challenge presented by ‘distributed responsibility’ to individual team members who may have to share some responsibilities while others will have to ‘up their game’ to take their proper place in a more fully functioning team.
The report is published alongside ‘Creating Capable Teams Approach (CCTA)’, which provides practical guidance to help teams to reflect on their current and future capabilities and skill mix and implement the recommendations of New Ways of Working (NWW) for everyone.
Launching both publications, Louis Appleby said:
“I have been impressed and heartened by the enthusiasm and drive exhibited by all those involved in producing both of these resources
New Ways of Working has the backing from across the sector because people recognise that we must do more to develop staff and ensure that teams have the right mix of skills to meet the needs of patients.”
Full implementation is still some way off. Work will continue through 2007/8 to gather positive practice examples and to introduce a series of collaborative Implementation Learning Sets to help take forward NWW across the whole of mental health.