SCIE media releases 2007

Dignity in care within mental health

15 August 2007

SCIE's expands Dignity in Care practice guide to include mental health care

The Social Care Institute for Excellence (SCIE) welcomes the announcement today, by Ivan Lewis, MP Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Department of Health, that its Dignity in Care Campaign will now cover mental health services.

SCIE's chief executive, Julie Jones, says:

"Dignity in Care is a key issue for all users of social care services, not just older people. SCIE welcomes the Department of Health's expansion of the original campaign to cover one of the most excluded groups in society: people with mental health problems. To support this expansion we have revised Practice Guide 9: Dignity in Care to include a new section on areas of mental health in which dignity may be more of an issue, such as tackling stigma. It's an essential resource for all practitioners."

As well as tackling stigma, key issues include older people's mental health care and acute inpatient care. The guide includes a variety of new practice examples and resources covering mental health, and additional material can also be found in the section on mealtimes and nutritional care.

For example, you can download the Action on Stigma principles, developed by SHIFT (a five year initiative to tack stigma and discrimination towards people with Mental Health issues).

Or you can access the toolkit produced by the Let's Respect campaign, which targets healthcare staff working in an acute hospital environment who do not have a background in mental health, and helps them understand better the needs of older people with mental health problems.

You can download the latest research and reviews on acute inpatient care too, for example The Sainsbury Centre for Mental Health Service User and Carer Centred Services Research and the 2006/07 Healthcare Commission acute inpatient service review, alongside toolkits that demonstrate good practice.

The Department of Health's Dignity in Care Campaign was originally launched in November 2006 and its initial focus was on older people. The campaign is now being rolled out to look at issues relevant to dignity in mental health services, and ultimately it will be extended to all health and social care services.

Media contact

Iris Steen| Director of Communications| Social Care Institute for Excellence| T: 020 7089 7122 | Mobile: 07885 736 643 | Iris.Steen@scie.org.uk

Related SCIE work

• Mental Capacity Act training materials - Five sets of training materials to support the implementation of the Mental Capacity Act 2005.
• Dementia - Supporting people with dementia and their carers in health and social care - Published in November 2006 by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence and the Social Care Institute for Excellence, the guide is for health and social care staff who work with people with dementia and their carers, and those who work with older people and people with learning disabilities.
• Practice guide 2: Assessing the mental health needs of older people - The guide describes some of the specific mental health problems that older people may experience and aims to help practitioners in mainstream, non-specialist settings to develop their knowledge and skills and to think creatively about their work.
• Resource guide 9: Working together to support disabled parents - Looking at how to develop inter-agency protocols to support families in which parents have additional needs related to physical and/or sensory impairments, learning disabilities, mental health, drug and alcohol-related problems or serious illnesses.
• Position paper 08: A common purpose: Recovery in future mental health services - A collaboration between the Care Services Improvement Partnership (CSIP), Royal College of Psychiatrists (RCPsych) and Social Care Institute for Excellence (SCIE), which develops ideas, planning, service development and practice based on contemporary concepts of recovery.
• Knowledge review 15: Mtetezi - Developing mental health advocacy with African and Caribbean men - Looks at the significant gap in high quality and effective mental health advocacy in African and Caribbean men and raises questions about the services, advice and support services currently being provided, and what is actually needed, by this over-represented group in the mental health sector.