This report provides everything that is needed for people working in mental health services to make a business case for investing in early and community-based interventions. This includes, commissioners, practitioners, local authorities, policy-makers, providers, and social care. As part of this document, the authors have provided the evidence for the cost-effectiveness of a range of [read the full story…]
Schizophrenia is a crippling condition that often (in about 20-30% of patients) shows an inadequate response to first-line antipsychotic drugs. Because it is associated with significant, often devastating reductions in quality of life, the management of refractory cases of schizophrenia represents a major challenge to psychiatry. As pharmacotherapy is the treatment of choice, stringent guidelines [read the full story…]
With the background of 11% of total United States government spending for disability support in 2006, the authors from Boston Children’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School highlight the financial and social imperatives to improve services for people with learning disabilities. They remind us that most of the current focus on research has been on environmental [read the full story…]
This review from the University of York’s Centre for Health Economics is certainly timely for commissioners in England, with plans for the Better Care Fund well underway and Simon Stevens, the new Chief Executive for NHS England, recently quoted as saying “no-one should pretend just combining two financially leaky buckets will magically create a watertight funding solution” [read the full story…]
Background Personalisation at its simplest is about starting with one person at the centre of any process concerned with responding to social care (and increasingly, health care) needs. SCIE have suggested that this will require ‘significant transformation’ of adult social care services, structures and processes, with implications for the role of social workers. The researchers [read the full story…]
Background A recent report from the Improving Health and Lives team suggested that over half of the advocacy organisations in the UK provide services for people with learning disabilities. The report pointed out that given the increasing move towards personalisation and the changes taking place in the organization of commissioning, that there was likely to [read the full story…]
Good sleep is a crucial part of our physical and mental well-being. We typically spend about a third of our lives asleep but when we miss out on sleep, we can feel fatigued and struggle to concentrate. Sleep problems are generally quite common and have been reported as one of the most common health conditions [read the full story…]
Listening to a World Health Organisation podcast recently I learnt that someone dies as a result of suicide every 40 seconds; this equates to a million suicides each year. The podcast contains a myriad of such stark statistics and the contributors’ highlight how it is well established that young people are often at risk, and [read the full story…]
This new report from the Nuffield Trust is the first output of a project developed with the Audit Commission and NHS Confederation. This first output is the result of qualitative research to capture learning from earlier periods of financial deficit within the NHS, with a view to preparing for the financial challenges ahead. The second [read the full story…]
Integrated care is seen as critical to delivering better quality services for patients and service users and a key element of health policies in the UK. However, the evidence base suggests a fragmented picture, with variations in definitions and implementations limiting what can be learned and applied elsewhere. This new report, Crossing Boundaries: Improving integrated [read the full story…]
