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The Integration of Mental Health Social Work and the NHS
June 2008 | 192 pages | Learning Matters
The integration of services has been NHS policy for a number of years, but how successfully has it been achieved? This book explores the issues from a social care perspective and examines changes in practice so far, particularly progress towards the overall aim of improving the experience of the service user and achieving 'seamless services'.
The clash between medically-driven and socially-driven approaches has long been discussed and the book considers whether these two approaches have now been reconciled, or whether the reality of modern service provision continues to create a range of power struggles and demoralization among the professional groups.
Setting the scene: the past, the present and possible futures
Government Direction: A policy framework
Social Work as an Identity within Mental Health Services
The social perspective versus the medical perspective: have we found a middle ground?
Ownership and the secondment of social work staff
Wholesale change?
Working in partnership
Health & social care budgets: will the fog ever lift?
Integrated services: where do the service users fit in?
Approved Mental Health Professionals: a Trojan horse
The experience of substance misuse: a word from the voluntary sector
From the other angle: a word from health
The integration agenda: what have we learnt so far?
Social work students are often confused as to how multi-disciplinary work may operate in practice. This book provides a useful context to current practice arrangements. It provides useful practical applications and recognises some of the compromise models between social and medical perspectives.
Dept of Social and Policy Sciences, Bath University
June 18, 2014