Today sees the launch of a practical leaflet which aims to improve services for older people with mental health needs, especially those who are in receipt of care or who are inpatients in hospital.
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This concise and easy to read report presents ten key recommendations for staff that, when implemented, would improve the quality of existing care for older and often extremely vulnerable people.
Moving On also poses a set of questions for commissioners and service providers to ask themselves when checking service standards, and provides comprehensive links and contacts for further reading/information.
Professor Ian Philp, national director of older people’s services said: « Older people with mental health problems are the most vulnerable of all the groups we are charged with providing care for. What happened on Rowan Ward should never have happened. The comprehensive review of in-patient services and the advice and recommendations that came from it, and which is set out in this pamphlet, should go some way to making sure that events such as happened on Rowan Ward cannot happen again. »
Moving On is part of a programme of work committed to improving care for older people with mental health needs. As part of this ongoing programme of work CSIP is working with the Department of Health to produce a comprehensive service development guide, due to be published in September this year.