Samantha Holmes is Head of Co Production & Involvement at Rethink Mental Illness. Sam expresses the importance of understanding how to make new roles in mental health services work in the context of addressing the priorities for care of those with lived experience. Highlighting how the New Roles in Mental Health Research Project (led by the University of Sheffield and Sheffield Health and Social Care NHS Trust) will be able to inform best practice.
Rethink Mental Illness improves the lives of people severely affected by mental illness through its network of local groups and services, expert information and successful campaigning. Rethink’s goal is to make sure everyone severely affected by mental illness has a good quality of life.
You can read the new Rethink Mental Illness Coproduction Guide for Integrated Care Systems ‘Policy into Practice: Rethink Mental Illness’s model for coproduction’ at
rethink.org/aboutus/what-we-do/community-mental-health-unit/policy-into-practice-rethink-mental-illness-s-model-for-coproduction/
Background:
The National Health Service (NHS) is currently facing a workforce crisis, and mental health services have been hit the hardest, with a higher turnover of staff and more vacant positions than the rest of the NHS. To bolster the mental health workforce, a range of new roles, such as Nursing Associates, Physician Associates, and Peer Support Workers, have been created. However, introducing new roles in mental health teams often leads to disruption in how care is organised and delivered.
With £800,000 of funding from the National Institute of Health Research (NIHR), researchers from Sheffield University Management School (SUMS) and the School of Health and Related Research (ScHARR) will study how best to introduce new roles in mental health to strengthen and support the healthcare system as a whole, for the benefit of service users and those delivering care. The project, “New Roles, New Challenges: Understanding boundary work to support the implementation of new roles in mental health Trusts”, will take a novel approach to this challenge. The project will develop a model to understand the different types of new roles, why they are being introduced and how they impact on how care is delivered. This model will then be validated by NHS staff and service users, and will inform eight in-depth case studies across four NHS Trusts to understand how new roles can most effectively be introduced.
For more info on the project please see the website.
https://sites.google.com/sheffield.ac.uk/new-roles-in-mental-health/home
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