Community mental health survey

As found here:

http://www.cqc.org.uk/public/reports-surveys-and-reviews/surveys/community-mental-health-survey-2011

First off this survey was given to:

 service users aged 16 and over were eligible for the survey if they were seen at the trust between 1 July 2010 and 30 September 2010 and had received specialist care or treatment for a mental health condition. The survey included all service users in contact with local NHS mental health services, including those who receive care under the Care Programme Approach (CPA).

The response rate was only 33% but encompassed 17,000 replies, which is a good sample size though how representative the samples for each PCT were remains to be seen.

So to the survey and the important questions.

After being asked what type of worker they had seen participants were asked

4. Did this person listen carefully to you?

	Survey Year		Significant change between10 and 11
	2010	2011
Yes, definitely	80%	79%
Yes, to some extent	17%	18%	↑
No	3%	3%
Number of respondents	16743	16880

 Which is a good start in my book.

.

 Did this person treat you with respect and dignity?

	Survey Year		Significant change between 10 and 11
	2010	2011
Yes, definitely	88%	87%	↓
Yes, to some extent	10%	11%	↑
No	2%	2%
Number of respondents	16727	16778

Again similar and again not bad however when it came to medication descions this question was asked

10. Do you think your views were taken into account in deciding which medication to take?

	Survey Year		Significant change between 10 and 11
	2010	2011
Yes, definitely	57%	56%
Yes, to some extent	31%	31%
No	12%	12%
Number of respondents	14764	14787

Which shows that people are actually less sure that staff are taking them seriously but still it’s not bad.

So now on to contacting your professional in a crisis. Of the people who have a number and had used it in the last 12 months this the question:

38. The last time you called the number did you have any problems getting through to someone?

	Survey Year
	2011
Yes	24%
No	76%
Number of respondents	3099

Which for a crisis is quite poor more importantly is did they get what care they needed.

39. The last time you called the number, did you get the help you wanted?

	Survey Year		Significant change between 10 and 11
	2010	2011
Yes, definitely	50%	50%
Yes, to some extent	31%	35%	↑
No	19%	16%	↓
Number of respondents	2698	3135

So is this bad?

I’m not sure,

 however here is where things start to get interesting in the survey because it starts giving the option of ‘no but I would have liked...’ and for me this is where the improvement that the NHS are looking at come in. It seems they are asking what it is you, the end user want

They ask about getting help with your physical health needs, help with your care responsibilities (including looking after children), help with finding or keeping work (e.g. being referred to an employment scheme, help with finding and/or keeping your accommodation, getting help with financial advice or benefits (e.g. Housing Benefit, Income Support, Disability Living Allowance).

These tables show

·         Yes definitely, 26-37%,

·         Yes, to some extent 25-34%

·         No, but I would have liked some 31-43%

However all those who said they didn’t need support were excluded so the sample sizes for these are different for each table and are not strictly comparable and does not account for those people expressing a need for more than one care need or whether they were met.

The biggest positive response for care needs were for physical where 10883 people responded.

That’s a lot of people whose care needs are being overlooked by the mental health team. I would question why it is they feel the mental health team should be supporting them in their physical needs as well as their mental health ones.

 Shouldn’t/ couldn’t they go to their GP’s and access these supports from other teams?

I can see that having your care coordinated from the one place an advantage but physical needs seem to have a system all of their own and it seems a shame that it couldn’t be used.

I particularly don’t understand why when you are looking for help getting back into work why you are not looking to another team. There are organisations out there that do this. For instance in my area the charity Mind run a program called supported employment to do just that.

It seems we expect an awful lot of one person/ team, however maybe that’s the nature of mental health that when we go down these things do all need to be picked up by someone else and not our families or friends or even good planning/ organising. Maybe we do need them to be organised in the one place as we can’t handle the many different organisations ourselves or within our families.

Type of care	% positive response for needing/wanting care *	Total number of people responding	Yes met	Yes to some extent	No and would have liked
Physical needs	65	10883	35 %	34%	31%
Care responsibilities	30	5138	31%	34%	35%
Getting a job	22	3656	26%	31%	43%
Accommodation	25	4264	36%	26%	38%
Financial	49	8233	37%	25%	38%

*Please note this is using the figure 16787 (taken from the first table) the total number of people who responded as having remembered that they had seen someone from the mental health team within the last year however it is just a fact that they had not seen them and does not say whether they had ever wanted to but been unable to for other reasons.

This table doesn’t take into account those people who responded with care needs in more than one category, so those people who needed physical care  may have responded that they needed help with their care responsibilities, getting a job, accommodation and so forth as well.

The last question is about the overall satisfaction the respondent has with the mental health team and their work.

	Survey Year		Significant change between 10 and 11
	2010	2011
Excellent	29%	29%
Very good	30%	30%
Good	20%	20%
Fair	12%	13%
Poor	5%	5%
Very poor	4%	4%	↓
Number of respondents	16272	16619

So from this I conclude that

·         79% good or above

·         13% satisfactory

·         9% Poor or worse

Interstingly there’s been significant decrease in people rating very poor however there is not obvious change to the percentage in the table which is good.

From this I have a picture of a service that badly needs more funding so it can be extended to those areas that people need. The service people get seems to be generally good though some areas do need improvement.