Learning Disability Partnership Boards were established as a result of the Valuing People White Paper to work within the overall framework of local strategic partnerships to oversee inter-agency planning and service development. Crucial to the success of partnership boards was that the membership should be multi stakeholder, to include service users, carers, senior representatives from [read the full story…]
If you incline to start presentations with a ‘killer’ statistic, then the annual Health Survey for England (HSE) is one for you. HSE monitors trends in the nation’s health, and progress towards selected health targets. It helps commissioners to have a better understanding of health issues and enables decision makers to shape policies to improve [read the full story…]
I had a fantastic response to the November poll, so a big thanks to everyone who took the time to tell me what professional group you belong to. The Mental Elf is used most by mental health nurses who make up 21.9% of the total polled audience. It’s also well used by patients (12.4%), students [read the full story…]
The NHS Confederation Mental Health Network have a published a review that discusses the readiness of mental health commissioners and providers to start working under the new Payment By Results system from April 2012. The review involved speaking to more than 100 people from mental health trusts, commissioners, the independent sector, local authorities and national [read the full story…]
The authors of this study set out to investigate sleep patterns in children with Down syndrome by asking parents to complete a questionnaire on sleep habits. Typical sleep problems included sleep maintenance problems, snoring, and disordered breathing. The authors administered a 33 item questionnaire on children’s sleep habits to the parents of 35 children with [read the full story…]
Many studies have shown that people with learning disabilities are at risk of overweight and obesity, The authors of this study were interested in the potential impact of beliefs, attitudes and behaviours of parents of adolescents with learning disabilities on the body mass index (BMI) of the adolescents and the parents. They also wanted to [read the full story…]
This cross sectional study uses data from the Health Survey for England to explore the relationship between poor mental health and low income. The research team from Exeter University included 94,870 adults in the study (1997-2006) which used the 12-item General Health Questionnaire (GHQ-12) to assess happiness, symptoms of anxiety or depression and sleep disturbance [read the full story…]
The autumn leaves are falling in my neck of the woods, so it’s time to say thanks to everyone who took part in last months poll, which asked if you would be interested in a mobile app of the Mental Elf to receive daily alerts on your smartphone. 71% of people who responded said that [read the full story…]
Thanks very much to everyone who took the time to participate in our September poll, which asked your preferred method for keeping up to date with the Mental Elf. Half of those who voted said that a weekly email newsletter would be the best way to keep up to date. Visiting the website was quite [read the full story…]
The NHS Confederation have published a 20-page report that examines the views of mental health service users and carers on personal health budgets. Personal health budgets are defined as the allocation of NHS funding which patients/ service users, after an assessment, are able to personally control and use for the services they choose to support [read the full story…]
