“A Vision for Change” guidance resource enabling community mental health teams to advance mental health services in Ireland
The Mental Health Care Group of the Health Service Executive will be recruiting over 400 multi-disciplinary staff to professionally complete community mental health teams. These staff will work at both general adult and child and adolescent service level. This development constitutes a significant opportunity to boost the capacity of community mental health teams and provides the practical potential to re-orient services towards a community based delivery model rather than an institutional based model of care.
Area Mental Health Management Teams will be expected to provide leadership, direction and support to services locally. This guidance resource has been created to enable a high standard of service provision to happen in the most effective and efficient way possible.
Guidance Papers Contained in this resource:
- Components of Acute Community- Based Secondary Mental Health Care – Resource Paper
Based on “A Vision for Change” this paper seeks to articulate an agreed understanding of the essential components of mental health care that service users and carers should expect to be available in the community and how they link together to provide a recovery orientated seamless continuum of care.
- Guidance Paper on the Reporting Structures, Membership, Functions, Structures and Processes of Area Mental Health Management Teams
This paper describes the membership, functions, structures and processes of the Area Mental Health Management Team as envisaged by “A Vision for Change” mapped on to current Health Service Executive organisational structures.
- Proposed Job Specification - Business Manager, Area Mental Health Management Team
This paper seeks to define the parameters of this key functional role within the new Management Team.
- National Guidance on the Implementation of the Team Co-Ordinator Role within Community Mental Health Teams
In the context of enhanced multi-disciplinary working in community mental health teams, this new role as envisaged in “A Vision for Change” is key to the delivery of effective and efficient services to service users and carers.
- Outline Support Plan to assist with team functioning of Area Mental Health Management Teams and professionally complete Community Mental Health Teams and the roll out of Clinical Care Programmes
This short paper proposes some initial guiding steps that teams should take to assist them to optimise the utility of the entire range of professional skills available in the multi-disciplinary team.
The guidance resource has been developed by the National Vision for Change Working Group through a variety of sub groups in consultation with the National Strategic Management Group for Mental Health over the past year.
The “A vision for change” guidance resource was recently launched by the Minister for Disability, Mental Health and Older Persons Kathleen Lynch at a mental health leadership forum. The leadership forum brought together senior clinicians and managers in HSE Mental Health Services and senior operational managers in HSE, along with a select number of key external stakeholders with a particular interest in the implementation of “A Vision for Change”.
