Work was also good, and there
were two things from last week to note. One was visiting colleagues in one of
our community older adult services. Always wonderful to meet colleagues and to
hear about both their achievements and challenges. They did not disappoint!
The second was having a first
read of the NHS Quality Strategy published last week. I wasn’t particularly
inspired. However, there is nothing in the guidance that anyone would want to
argue with. It provides a bit more of the detail, as to how the NHS 10 Year
Health Plan might be best taken forward. I was left with a feeling there were
lots of things promised for the future, with even more detail to be worked
through. That said, there is much we can do in interpreting the guidance to
ensure the decisions we take are ones we own. I have set aside time tomorrow to
have a second and more purposeful read.
One of the things that caught my
eye was the desire to develop and publish a Modern Service Framework (MSF) for
Mental Health. The 10 Year Health Plan sets out the notion of MSFs being the
means for improving outcomes associated with serious health conditions where
there are high rates of avoidable deaths and ill health. In the first instance,
these will include a MSF for cardiovascular disease, frailty, dementia and
mental health.
It’s said that each MSF will set
out an ambitious long-term outcome goal (a so called ‘moonshot goal’)
for the particular service MSF. Take a look at the current cardiovascular disease MSF which, whilst having 12 immediate priorities, sets out a much bigger
ambition for the future. I thought the scale of ambition was truly
impressive.
In our Trust, we are not sitting
back waiting for the Mental Health MSF. We know our immediate focus has to be
on continuing to reduce out of area placements (something we are already
succeeding in), improving timely access to support for children and young
people (we are not doing so well at) strengthening the continuity of care, and
ensuring folk receive the right support at the right time (for us this means particularly
upping the pace of our community transformation programme). All of which we are
focused upon.
I think one of the reasons my
interest was piqued by the mention of a new Mental Health MSF was, actually, I
have been here before. It was way back when I first started my academic career.
Through my PhD supervisor Professor Joel Richman’s generosity, I was able to
stand on his shoulders to see the world from many different perspectives. For
that I will be forever grateful. He was a great PhD supervisor, but Joel wasn’t
the only one to help me on my academic journey. The late David Skidmore was a
steadfast guide, and Ian Stronach and Sheila Stark became the best mentors
anyone could want.
In my earliest days, both were more
than generous in allowing me to be a named author on what I think was one of my
most favourite papers. The paper was tilted ‘Towards an Uncertain Politics
of Professionalism: Teacher and Nurse Identities in Flux’. Hopefully, you can
read it here. It became an enormously well-cited paper, and in my day, to
become a professor, one had to write good quality papers for refereed journals,
be an active researcher, secure research funding and successfully supervise PhD
students to get their doctorate. It’s sometimes very different these days.
Our paper referred to the
original Mental Health MSF, published in 1999. Frank Dobson was the Secretary
of State for Health back then, and the world was a very different place. To be
honest, I didn’t think much of that MSF. Did it improve mental health care? I
think probably not. Will the forthcoming MSF improve mental health care? Well,
I think the ‘improvement momentum’ is with us, and so I’m confident it
will.