Minutes of Inpatient Care Forum Meeting

Tuesday: March 23, 2010 at CEIMH 

Present: Jo Barber, Alex Davis, Adrian Fisher, Gordon Parsons, Paul Roberts (mins)

Apologies: Maureen Smokjis, Janie Greville, Stephen 

Spirituality Project 

Jo presented a paper with an overview of where her research into Spiritual Care has reached in the BSMHFT project. Birmingham has a particularly flourishing multi-faith Spiritual Care Team, catering for MH Service Users of all faiths and none. Their vision is to make Spiritual Care routinely available. The potential usefulness of this needed to be evaluated and so a programme of research was initiated. This required :

1. Definition of what is meant by SC
2. Decisions on suitable outcome measures
3. Test our Spiritual intervention using these.

The hypothesis is that SC will improve Spiritual well-being, and this in turn will lead to faster and more complete recovery from mental illness.

What has been achieved so far:

1. Designed a standard package of SC from collaboration between members of the SC Team and Service Users. Written a manual describing how it will be delivered.
2. Worked on Outcome Measures of Spiritual Well-Being, symptom relief and more general recovery (including practical quality of life and general psycho-social recovery). HONOS was used for symptom relief and WHOQOL-Bref for practical quality of life measures. For general psycho-social recovery their own tool was designed-Personal Recovery Scale-and piloted and came out well. For Spiritual Well-Being Ellison’s Scale was piloted alongside their own Personal Recovery Scale. Ellison’s was found to be not suitable for Uk service users. Personal Recovery Scale still being worked on to Jo’s satisfaction. Account needs to be considered of negative effects of Spirituality quite commonly seen in mental illness. This needs to be piloted this year.

Once validated, extended trial funding will be applied for. If successful, it is hoped an evidence base will be provided for routine provision of SC for MH service users. 

Advocacy Mapping Exercise: 

Alex has completed his research into services available in Birmingham. Birmingham East & North PCT commissions MH Advocacy services. Currently Friendship Care & Housing deliver for Adult & Older MH service users. There seems to be no provision for Deaf mentally ill, Learning Disabilities, Forensic or Children. His conclusion was that it does not work at PCT level.

The initial Proposal can be perused/downloaded here, and the recently completed Addendum here.  

Dementia Project: 

Jo is still seeking advice on the way forward for this piece of qualitative research. 

Spirituality Training in BSMHFT: 

Pastor Sandra Thomas, Head of Spiritual Care in BSMHFT, is unlikely to return to post after serious illness. Currently Carol Wilson is acting Head. As a result training has yet to be implemented although handbook is now available.   

Date of Next Meeting: 
Thursday May 13th at 10.30 at CEIMH. NB slightly later time.

 

DAB-P (21st April 2010)