LIAISON MENTAL HEALTH
ANNUAL REPORT 2002-2003

CLINICAL ACTIVITY 663 patients presenting at the acute hospitals with deliberate self harm participated in a psychosocial assessment. In excess of 95% patients were seen on the day of referral. 49 patients were referred on to the short term intervention programme.

RESEARCH AND EFFECTIVENESS Psychosocial assessments are recorded on a custom designed data base for the purposes of audit evaluation and research. A recent audit has examined the involvement of patients in secondary mental health services in Telford and Wrekin. Outcome data is collected for the short term intervention programme but as yetthere is insufficient staff time to report on the findings.

STAFFING AND MANAGEMENT Staffing has remained stable this year and the service continues to comprise half time consultant clinical psychologist leading the team, 2 specialist clinical nurses and half time clinical psychologist leading on short term intervention and research/audit. From 1 November the service has benefited from16 hours per week secretarial support.

RISK MANAGEMENT Our psychosocial assessment procedure which incorporates rigorous risk management has now been used on over 1800 clients and data is now readily available for analysis.

EDUCATION AND TRAINING We continue to respond to the mental health training needs of staff at the PRH, RSH and the Robert Jones and Agnes Hunt through presentations and informal question and answer sessions. Team education has been limited by the dearth of relevant training opportunities in the field. Tony Marrs successfully completed the one year City and Guilds 730 course: Certificate in Teaching Adult Learners and he undertook part of his teaching experience on the City and Guilds 3056 Certificate in Community Mental Health Care.

SERVICE USER/ CARER INVOLVEMENT Preliminary work has been undertaken on accessing user feedback and the study will be undertaken when resources permit.

CHALLENGES
After 4 years we are still unable to offer a consistent and reliable Liaison service, despite increasing pressures on emergency care in the general hospitals. There is no cover for staff absence and no service at weekends. The referral options after assessment have been made have become even more limited because the client group with high psychological distress and high risk of further self harm is not a priority for secondary mental health services. Plans have been made during the year to deliver a 7 day service to the General Hospitals and funding will be made available to make improvements. However these will not be complemented by improved access to mental health services.
Whilst the data is available for evaluation, audit and research the resources are not available to carry out these essential components of our work.
Considerable management time was lost this year through a move to a temporary building which finally occurred some 7 months behind schedule.