Sir, – Jacky Jones is right to raise the important issue of the lack of individual care plans for people using mental health services (“Second Opinion”, April 2nd). Individualised, person-centred, recovery-orientated plans are a basic requirement of a good quality mental health service.
In 2013, Mental Health Reform worked with our member organisations to define five components of a recovery-focused mental health service: hope, listening, partnership, choice and social inclusion. Working in partnership with individuals who use mental health services and, where appropriate, their family supporters, in a hopeful process of listening and engagement is vital if services are to be effective in supporting a person’s recovery.
In simple terms, people recover better when they are given hope, involved in decisions about their own treatment, offered a range of therapeutic options, and are supported to live a full live in the community.
While we were disappointed that the HSE’s Operational Plan for mental health services for 2014 did not commit to ensuring that every mental health service user would have an individual care/recovery plan, there is now an opportunity for the National Director of Mental Health to drive such an improvement across the country. The implementation of this basic reform could have wide-reaching effects in the system and would benefit everyone who seeks support from the HSE’s mental health services. Yours, etc,
SHARI McDAID,
Director,
Mental Health Reform,
Coleraine Street,
Dublin 7
Sir, – Jacky Jones misses the real point in her criticism of mental health services not providing a care plan for every individual. As a social worker in a multidisciplinary mental health team, I, like others, work with patients with a variety of needs, from the most complex, such as severe and enduring mental disorders, with dual diagnosis of addiction and intellectual disabilities and with limited family support to deal with significant life stressors, to less complex cases where patients can be managed by one worker or be relatively quickly referred back to their GP.
Providing a quality, efficient and effective service entails focusing in on those with the greatest needs, having transparent, screening processes in place to ensure meaningful care plans with a responsible key worker to co-ordinate the plan rather than a superficial one size fits all care plan, merely to tick the box. Yours, etc,
FRANK BROWNE,
Ballyroan Park,
Templeogue,
Dublin 16