Transforming children and young people’s mental health

Ways for schools and colleges to support pupils’ mental health are set out in a green paper, as well as plans for new mental health support teams.

The government has published proposals to improve mental health support for children and young people in England. Over £300 million has been made available to fund them.

The government is asking people for their views on the planned measures, which are set out in a green paper. The measures include:

• encouraging every school and college to have a ‘designated senior mental health lead’
• setting up mental health support teams working with schools, to give children and young people earlier access to services
• piloting a 4-week waiting time for NHS children and young people’s mental health services

Other proposals in the green paper include:

• a new working group to look at mental health support for 16 to 25-year-olds
• a report by the Chief Medical Officer on the impact that technology has on children and young people’s mental health, to be produced in 2018

The consultation on the green paper will run for 13 weeks until 2 March 2018.

Full document: Transforming children and young people’s mental health provision: a green paper

This short video describes the main proposals in the green paper.

Urgent and emergency care: best practice

This CQC report offers practical examples of how leading emergency departments are meeting the challenges of managing capacity and demand, and managing risks to patient safety .

This report from the Care Quality Commission details the good practice identified following the Commission’s work with consultants, clinical leads, senior nursing staff and managers from leading emergency departments in 17 NHS acute trusts.

This resource identifies:

• strategies staff use to meet the challenge of increased demand and manage risks to patient safety
• positive actions to address potential safety risks and to manage increased demand better
• how working with others can manage patient flow and ensure patients get the care they need
• that rising demand pressures in emergency departments are an issue for the whole hospital and local health economy.

Full report: Sharing best practice from clinical leaders in emergency departments

Supporting transformational change

Supporting Change In Your NHS: The Non-Executive Community In Transformational Change | NHS Clinical Commissoners | NHS England |  NHS Improvement

This joint publication with NHS England and NHS Improvement summarises discussions held at two events earlier this year that brought together more than 200 CCG lay members and trust non-executive directors. These events focused on how lay members and NEDs can contribute to the integration and transformation of their local health communities.

Full document available here

Comprehensive geriatric assessment & independent living

Comprehensive geriatric assessment may increase the likelihood that frail older people can be discharged to independent living | Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews | via National Institute for Health Research

Older people who received comprehensive geriatric assessment when in hospital were slightly more likely to be living in their own homes one year later. Sixty percent were discharged to independent living compared with 56% receiving standard ward care. People who had received this proper assessment were also 20% less likely to be in a nursing home after three months or more.

Comprehensive geriatric assessment is a careful review by a multidisciplinary specialist team of people’s medical, functional, mental and social capabilities. It aims to improve recovery and enable people to maintain function and independence.

This updated Cochrane review covered 29 trials compares this assessment with routine care for people over 65, excluding those with stroke and orthopaedic conditions. It may save NHS resources, but the quality of evidence was too low to assess this reliably.

Further details at National Institute for Health Research

Full reference: Ellis G, Gardner M, Tsiachristas A, et al. Comprehensive geriatric assessment for older adults admitted to hospital. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews. 2017;(9)

 

The value of patient organisations

The added value of patient organisations | The European Patients Forum

The objective of this report is to emphasise the contribution of patient organisations in representing and voicing the situation of a specific population that would otherwise not be represented.

Image source: http://www.eu-patient.eu

Patient organisations are able to help policy-makers understand the experience of living with a disease or a condition. They use this ‘end-user perspective’ to promote the interests of patients at all stages of policy development and in a range of institutional settings.

The main activities of patient organisations are set out in four different areas: policy, capacity building and education, peer support and research & development (both health and pharmaceutical).

Full report: The added value of patient organisations

NHS England action to save lives by catching more cancers early

NHS England announces the scaling up of an innovative scheme that catches lung cancer early by scanning patients, along with new details of a more sensitive bowel cancer test that could save thousands of lives.

NHS England is now funding scanners in other areas as part of a national programme to diagnose cancer earlier, improve the care for those living with cancer and ensure each cancer patient gets the right care for them. This follows the success of the Manchester scanner scheme, where mobile scanners are detecting four out of five cases of lung cancer in the early stages when it is easier to treat. The mobile scanning trucks have picked up one cancer for every 33 patients scanned over the course of a year.

Plans for ‘FIT’, a more sensitive bowel cancer test that could see as many as 1,500 more cancer caught earlier every year have also been confirmed.

‘FIT’ is an easy to use home testing kit which predicts bowel cancer, following the introduction of the test almost a third of a million more people are expected to complete screening. The sensitivity level determines the number of people who should go on for further cancer testing.

 

High-impact innovations for patient benefit

App that helps pregnant women monitor hypertension among new NHS innovations that will save lives and improve treatment | NHS England

A wireless sensor that better detects breathing rate in hospital patients, an app to help pregnant women monitor hypertension and another that directs patients with minor injuries to treatment units with the shortest queues are among the latest innovations set to be spread across the NHS.

Eleven projects are being backed in the latest round of NHS England’s programme to develop and spread pioneering ideas, equipment and technology that have the potential to save lives as well as money.

Further detail of this latest round of the NHS Innovation Accelerator (NIA) programme  can be found at NHS England

 

 

CCG Improvement and assessment framework

CCG Improvement and Assessment Framework 2017/18 | NHS England 

This updated framework describes the CCG annual performance assessment and the metrics that will inform that assessment for 2017/18; it replaces the Improvement and Assessment framework (IAF) for 2016/17.  The framework is accompanied by a technical annex which provides the detail of the construction and purpose of each of the indicators in the framework.

Full document at NHS England