Norfolk and Suffolk mental health Skype ‘outsourcing’ causes concern
A health trust’s proposal to help treat patients with depression by using “staff from lower wage countries” via Skype showed a lack of understanding of mental health care, say campaigners.
The idea was put forward in a report to the government by the mental health trust for Norfolk and Suffolk.
Unison, which represents mental health staff, said the plan failed to show an understanding of mental health care.
In a nationwide survey 54 per cent of head teachers complained that local mental healthservices were ineffective in supporting the needs of pupils.
Nearly half the heads (47 per cent) said their increasing workloads were affecting their ability to identify pupils’ mental health difficulties at a time when such problems are on the rise in schools.
The survey, by the CentreForum Mental Health Commission also found that one in 10 schools still had no mental health and wellbeing training available for staff, in spite of Government pledges, and 65 per cent were not even assessing the mental health needs of their pupils.
The report comes at a time when emotional and behaviour problems among younger children are increasing because of higher divorce rates, financial pressures at home and the growing influence of social media.
E£12m boost to get mental health patients back to workmployment advisers and GPs will also receive training to identify mental health issues and recognise the role of work in improving mental health.
Those of us who have been campaigning over the last few years to save public services from government cuts and austerity have been known to say, only half jokingly, that when the Tories are done, there will be “nothing left”. But this isn’t true. Tory austerity measures are a full on ideological assault. Their economic policy masks a concerted attempt to demonise the poorest and encourage people to think that the unemployed, the ill, the disabled, immigrants, asylum seekers and the old aren’t “deserving”. Thus the future is not one without public services. It is one where minimal services are delivered, by privatised corporations, to those who are deemed worthy.
Millions of UK workers fear reporting mental health conditions !
Huge numbers of UK workers are hiding mental health conditions from their employers for fear of it affecting their job, according to Friends Life.
A poll from One Poll for the insurance firm, which surveyed more than 2,000 people, found that more than 50% of all workers believe being open about a common mental health problem would damage their career prospects.
The UK working-age population is more than 38 million, according to the Office for National Statistics.
So more than 19 million workers in the UK could be worried about reporting a common mental health problem to their employers.
The head of Unison has urged NHS staff to ‘keep on fighting’ after six different unions in Manchester took part in the first nationwide health service walkout for 32 years.
The strike was triggered by the coalition government’s decision to refuse NHS staff the 1% pay rise recommended by an independent pay review body and sparked further outrage after the proposal to award MPs a 9% pay rise earlier this year.
The mental health intermediate care centre, which was officially announced on Monday, would manage tenant’s mental health and provide help with integrating back into society.
However, MM has learned that many of the staff who would be needed to run the centre are set to lose their jobs in April, if proposed Salford Council budget cuts take effect.
The mental health floating support service which workers are employed in will be seeing a reduction in funding of £214,000 under the council budget cuts.
Steve North, branch secretary of Salford Unison, has been involved in the proposed centre’s planning and says the announcement is a ploy by Salford Council.
“On the face of it this looks like a really positive development,” North told MM.
Re: Patient and Public Involvement in Research Strategy January 2014
The National Survivor User Network (NSUN) was asked by the Manchester Users Network (one of our member groups), to provide comments on the above strategy.
This was in relation to the definition of ‘Service User’ on page 5 and the serious concerns from ‘service users’ that the definition used was both excluding and restrictive in terms of involvement.
