As part of transforming our services, we’re working with partners across the public and voluntary community and social enterprise sector to transform the way people with mental illnesses are supported in their local community. To achieve this, we need to focus on delivering compassionate, meaningful and personalised intervention-based care. This needs to be planned between the service user and their care team and with input from families, carers and wider services where appropriate.
Care Programme Approach
The historic Care Programme Approach has not been updated for almost 15 years. It creates barriers to a more flexible and personalised approach. After staff and public feedback, it was evident that the Care Programme Approach didn’t support the transformation vision. The approach was too bureaucratic and limiting.
In March 2022 NHS England published a position statement on the Care Programme Approach (CPA). The statement supported a move towards a universal high standard of personalised care planning and coordination.
Personalised care planning
Personalised care planning provides a great opportunity for everyone.
It sees a move from a one-size fits all approach, to an intervention focused approach. Conversation and dialogue is encouraged and care is tailored to a person’s individual needs. Everyone will be entitled to a personalised care plan.
Personalising care will meet people’s overall needs so much more. It will allow for more creative and innovative approaches that are agreed between people, their families and carers and those that support them. This also means that the support someone receives can be adapted as and when their needs or circumstances change.
A collaborative approach to personalised care
Organisations such as mental health, acute trust, social care and local authorities will work more closely to look at someone’s overall needs. It will mean a holistic approach to support people’s overall wellbeing, rather than just their mental health in isolation. This will address people’s wider needs that may have a direct or indirect impact on their wellbeing.
Working together will support and empower people to build on their strengths and to live their best lives. By doing so this will ultimately improve recovery outcomes.
To support this approach, we’re also working with partners to break down barriers between systems and to look at how information can be shared. The aim is to make communication between organisations a lot simpler and to reduce red tape and other restrictions experienced when people have to move between one organisation and another.
Adult mental health clinical model of care
This personalised and collaborative approach is recognised in our adult mental health clinical model of care.
As a trust we can provide expertise and applied knowledge at all stages of the patient journey, and across system boundaries, including the health, social, voluntary and community sector. We recognise the critical role that relationships play in all aspects of care and the wider offer to our communities. Our wide range of roles and how expertise is used to meet people’s needs are key to our model of care and central to the success of delivering a personalised care approach.
Bringing up standards of care for all
Personalised care planning aims to raise the standards of care for all. It also aims to reduce health inequalities and to support those that don’t or struggle to engage with our services.
Our Did Not Attend (DNA) / Was Not Brought policy is central in delivering co-created, personalised care. The policy aims to ensure that practitioners are aware of the importance of using a trauma-informed approach. It also stresses the importance of building a therapeutic relationship with patients and / or carers that struggle to engage, who don’t attend appointments, or who are not brought to appointments.
The policy supports staff to address the reasons behind why people may not attend their appointments and any potential risks that may result. It encourages a personalised approach, reasonable adjustments and effective communication to help people access the support more easily.
Your place in our personalised care journey
Moving away from CPA to a personalised care planning approach involves a real culture shift. However, it brings with it a real exciting opportunity. A chance to work smarter, build our relationships with wider partners and to make a real difference for those we care for.
There’s a lot of work to do but we aim to keep you updated as we go. We welcome your input along the way.
Services retaining CPA
CPA will be retained in a small number of services due to its continued use in health and justice settings. However, we expect that the fundamental concepts of personalised care are still adopted, such as compassionate, meaningful and personalised intervention-based care
