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Community Services

This project is addressing the modernisation of community mental health teams, day services and improving social inclusion. A work stream has also been established to enable the trust to provide primary mental health services.

Modernising Community Mental Health Services

Over recent years there has been a huge amount of investment in the development of new community teams to provide modern mental health services such as crisis and home treatment, assertive outreach, early intervention and more recently primary mental health teams. These teams have been established with very clearly defined remits. This has provided the trust with the opportunity to redefine the role of the traditional community mental health teams.

This project aims to modernise community mental heath teams to meet the needs of commissioners who are increasingly adopting the stepped model of care approach. Most importantly this will provide a better experience for people using the service by promoting recovery, social inclusion and improving access to psychological therapy.

An event to create the vision for community mental health services of the future will be held in early 2009. 

Primary Mental Health Services

Traditionally the trust’s core business has focused on providing secondary, specialist mental health services. In some parts of Lancashire the trust also provides primary mental health services. These services address mental health problems which are often described as more common and less severe and make up the majority of treatment episodes. Click here to download a diagram that describes the difference between primary and secondary mental health services. 

There is the potential to expand this further due to the introduction of practice based commissioning. This is an arrangement whereby frontline clinicians, for example GPs, are responsible for choosing providers to offer treatment to their patients. This means that in the future the trust could be bidding for contracts to provide primary care mental health services. 

A guide has been developed to assist trust managers in producing a tender application to win such contracts. A menu is also being produced for GPs to inform them what primary mental health services the trust is able to provide.

Social Inclusion 

The development of community services has resulted in many people with more serious mental health problems living within the community. However in many cases they still remain socially isolated and excluded from the communities in which they live.

'Fewer than two in ten people with severe mental health problems are in employment. Research has consistently shown that between 60 - 90% of people who suffer from periods of mental ill health would like to work and that diagnosis or severity of illness are not predictors of employability'. (Sainsbury Centre for Mental Health - June 2008.)

The trust and Lancashire County Council and its other social care partners are working together to make social inclusion for people with mental health problems everybody's business and ensure that it is embedded in practice. In addition to some over arching project work around social inclusion there are three main workstreams:

• Accommodation - This workstream is reviewing the residential and rehabilitation units to identify how they can best support recovery and social inclusion.
• Assertive Outreach Teams - This workstream is looking at developing a consistent approach to service delivery by developing a common core operational policy that can be locally modified. In addition the workstream is looking at the pathways between AOT teams and the wider services, and exploring opportunities for closer links with local community facilities to provide a more socially inclusive service. An audit of the effectiveness of Assertive Outreach Services has been carried out and the results of this will be known shortly.
• Day Services - Traditionally day services have provided activities within a mental health centre. This has worked well in the past, but it has also encouraged social segregation. Expectations are changing. Developments in mental health awareness mean that service users, and those that work with them, are becoming far more focused on recovery and rebuilding a positive life, even in the face of ongoing problems. If day services are to transform to promote social inclusion, the focus needs to change to enabling people to access opportunities alongside other members of the community.