A National Workforce Plan for Approved Mental Health Professionals

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Stephen Martineau was at a day conference last week focusing on a new national workforce plan and proposals to introduce AMHP service standards as well as changes to the AMHP competencies. (1,030 words)

Recent empirical research at this Unit on the Approved Mental Health Professional (AMHP) workforce has focused on why so few in the eligible health professions are taking up the role. AMHPs are responsible for organising and undertaking assessments under the Mental Health Act 1983 (MHA) and, where statutory criteria are met, authorising detention under the Act. Traditionally a social worker role (they were formerly known as Approved Social Workers), it has been open to occupational therapists, learning disability and mental health nurses, and psychologists since November 2008. But about a decade since these professionals were enabled to become AMHPs, they still only make up around 5% of the AMHP workforce. Continue reading →

National study starts of new nursing role

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How can the new Nursing Associates help resolve some of the workforce recruitment and retention problems in health and social care? A new King’s College London-led study is finding out the answers to this question and it will also be seeking the views and experiences of patients and people using care services of these new staff. The study, funded by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) at the NIHR Policy Research Unit in Health and Social Care Workforce, will be the first to gather information, statistics and experiences of the new Nursing Associates in practice and from people supporting them. Continue reading →

Evidence gathering in social care research. Are we looking in the right places?

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John Woolham is Senior Research Fellow at the NIHR Health & Social John WoolhamCare Workforce Research Unit (HSCWRU), King’s College London. John reports from a Health Services and Delivery Research (HS&DR) Programme seminar, 15 May, which he attended on behalf of HSCWRU. (463 words)

The HS&DR is part of the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) and is responsible for funding research in health and social care settings. Its programme aims to produce rigorous and relevant evidence to improve the quality, accessibility and organisation of health and social care services.

The purpose of the seminar was to enable HS&DR to better understand the needs of evidence users, with a particular focus on social care, and how the HS&DR programme can respond to these needs. Continue reading →

Letter from the European Parliament: Promoting Quality Social Services with the ESF Plus

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Mary Baginsky is Senior Research Fellow at the NIHR Health & Social Care Workforce Research Unit at King’s College London. (611 words)

Dr Mary Baginsky

Dr Mary Baginsky

I was invited to attend an event (9 April 2019) at the European Parliament organised by the European Social Network (ESN) to discuss ‘Promoting Quality Social Services with the European Social Fund Plus (ESF+)’. The ESN has over 125 member organisations in 33 European countries and supports the sharing of knowledge, practice and policies between social services across Europe. The event was hosted by Sofia Ribeiro, a Portuguese MEP and member of the Employment and Social Affairs Committee in the European Parliament. The focus was on how the ESF+, amounting to 120 million euros in the coming period, could be put to best use to support the work of social services across Europe. Even though there are UK members of ESN none were present at the meeting. Continue reading →

Alan Kilmister reports from Homelessness Health Event

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Alan Kilmister is a Peer Researcher and Expert by Experience with HSCWRU’s Homeless Hospital Discharge Project. The project, which is led by Senior Research Fellow at HSCWRU, Dr Michelle Cornes, is due to report shortly. The project researchers last month published an open access article in Wellcome Open Research—‘Causes of death among homeless people: a population-based cross-sectional study of linked hospitalisation and mortality data in England’. (792 words)

Recent article from the HSCWRU study examining Hospital Discharge of homeless people

Recent article from the HSCWRU study examining Hospital Discharge of homeless people

Hi, it’s me Alan—yes, I know I am becoming a blogoholic. On Friday 8 March 2019 I attended the Queen’s Nursing Institute event, ‘Better Health for all Women especially those suffering homelessness’. It was held at Birmingham City University South Campus: it was a very good venue and we were well fed and watered, and all the speakers were women who introduced themselves with ‘nice to see you all’ on this International Women’s Day. Us poor menfolk were outnumbered by 20/1.

The four key themes of the meeting were: Improve quality of local health; and housing systems; improve access to healthcare; and, increasing knowledge and awareness. This was followed by six key recommendations: Accommodation, Collaborate, Together, Initiative and Intelligence, Ownership, and no Gaps in care. The main point out of these six to my mind was to foster collaborative working for homeless prevention and reduction and to ensure all health services understand their responsibilities regarding care and treatment of those that are homeless. Continue reading →

Oh, to be in Finland now that spring is here

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James Fuller reports on the ‘Housing First: Ending homelessness across Finland and the UK’ seminar at the Finnish Ambassador’s residence in London, 6 March 2019. The event was organised in co-operation with the Finnish Institute in London and Crisis UK. (1,070 words)

Kensington Palace Gardens, or Ambassadors Avenue as it might as well be called, is a private, heavily guarded boulevard nestled behind the sedate royal dwelling from which it takes its name that is packed with official residences. Not an obvious venue for a series of presentations, organised by the Finnish Institute, about how to house some of the most marginalised and multiply excluded members of society, even if the Finnish building is typically modest.

After a brief word from the Ambassador and the same from Jon Sparkes, Chief Executive of Crisis, we heard from Anita Birchall, Head of the Threshold Housing Project, a specialist housing first, five-year pilot project working with female homeless ex-offenders. As is generally the case for such pilots, Anita reeled off a succession of impressive outcomes for the fifty or so residents THP is helping, although she was clearly anxious about the renewal of her funding, as the end of term is fast approaching. She also revealed that whilst it had been possible to house people within about four weeks during the early stages of the pilot, at present it takes some 71 days on average. This is frustrating for her team, she said and is causing some distress to users of the service, who imagine an application will lead almost directly to accommodation. The idea that this is a ‘from the prison gate’ operation is way short of the mark. Continue reading →

2019 – a year of change for gambling in the UK?

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Stephanie Bramley is a Research Associate at the NIHR Health and Social Care Workforce Research Unit, King’s College London. (801 words)

It is only the middle of March and the Unit has submitted responses to three consultations about gambling.

This month we submitted a response to the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on gambling-related harm (Bramley, Manthorpe & Norrie, 2019a). This Group was previously the APPG on fixed-odds betting terminals (FOBTs) and following the success that it had with reducing the stake on FOBTs from £100 to £2 per spin, the Group has decided to conduct an inquiry into the impacts of online gambling (Gambling-related harm APPG, no date). Continue reading →

Older People’s Health and Social Care: LIVING WITH CHOICE & CONTROL?

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Dr Joan RapaportVisiting Research Fellow at the NIHR Health and Social Care Workforce Research Unit, Dr Joan Rapaport, reports from the 11th Annual Joint Conference from Age UK London and NIHR HSCWRU and Making Research Count (MRC) at King’s College London. It was held on 7 March 2019 at the Guy’s campus of King’s. On Twitter: #olderpeople11 (3,328 words)

Welcome

Joint chairs Professor Jill Manthorpe, Director of HSCWRU, and Paul Goulden, CEO of Age UK London welcomed nearly 100 people to the 11th Annual Joint Conference. The packed room included social workers, health care workers, researchers, and a diverse cross-section of ageing activists, users of services and their family carers, drawn from London’s older population.

Paul was pleased to report that since the last conference that London had signed up to the World Health Organization’s ‘Global Network of Age-friendly Cities and Communities’. Network members are committed to promoting healthy and active ageing and a good quality of life for older people. Many of the presentations and debates during the day addressed aspects of this theme. Continue reading →

Promoting the importance of human relationships: hospital social work

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Jo Moriarty, Senior Research Fellow at the NIHR Health & Social Care Workforce Research Unit, King’s College London introduces the new hospital social work report, which she wrote with Dr Nicole Steils and Prof Jill Manthorpe. World Social Work Day is on 19 March 2019 #WSWD2019 is the official hashtag. (602 words)

Mapping Hospital Social WorkThe theme for next week’s World Social Work Day is ‘promoting the importance of human relationships.’  In preparation for this we are launching our report into hospital social work, which was funded by the National Institute for Health Research Policy Research Programme at the request of the Chief Social Worker for Adults, Lyn Romeo.  Lyn has also kindly written the report’s foreword.

The origins of hospital social work lie in the decision made by the Royal Free Hospital in 1895 to appoint Mary Stewart as the first ‘lady almoner’. Her role was to interview people to decide who would be eligible for the free medical treatment that the hospital provided.  Other hospitals soon followed this example and by 1948, the Institute of Almoners had over 1000 active members.[1]  Written in the style of the time, Flora Beck’s textbook for almoners noted that their two key tasks were:

… to determine whether social problems are likely to have a bearing on the patient’s illness. The second is to make the patient feel that here is a person with whom he could, if necessary, discuss his personal difficulties; someone to whom he need not mind admitting any trivial misunderstanding which had been bothering him, and to whom he could reveal serious and confidential problems without embarrassment.[2, cited in 3] Continue reading →

Viva Las Vegas! Observations about gambling from Las Vegas…

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Stephanie Bramley is a Research Associate at the NIHR Health and Social Care Workforce Research Unit, King’s College London. (702 words)

Earlier this year I visited Las Vegas with two of my friends.  It was my first trip to Las Vegas and as a researcher who explores the impact of gambling for vulnerable people I was somewhat apprehensive about what I may see in Las Vegas.  However, the trip provided a good opportunity to explore gambling in ‘Sin City’.

The first thing that struck me was that gambling is synonymous with visiting hotels.  The majority of hotels in Las Vegas are ‘gaming hotels’ meaning that they have gambling facilities inside, typically a casino.  Indeed the casino is often central to hotel life – meaning that you often have to walk through a casino in order to visit any other part of the hotel.  For example, we stayed at the Paris Las Vegas whose check-in desks were situated off to the right-hand side of the casino floor. Furthermore, because of the location of the check-in desks it may be that children and young people may be exposed to gambling activities.  We did see a few families in the hotel who were visiting the hotel’s restaurants.  Although the official visitor statistics state that fewer children (classified as individuals under 21 years of age) visited Las Vegas in 2017 compared to 2016 (GLS Research, no date). Continue reading →