National Assembly for Wales
Health and Social Care Committee
Post-legislative scrutiny of the Mental Health (Wales) Measure 2010
Evidence from COCAPP – MHM 01
Contribution to the Health and Social Care Committee Inquiry into the Mental Health (Wales) Measure
David Rees AM
Chair
Health and Social Care Committee
National Assembly for Wales
Tuesday, 02 September 2014
Dear Mr Rees
On behalf of the COCAPP and COCAPP-A project teams I would like to make this brief contribution to the Health and Social Care Committee’s post-legislative inquiry into the Mental Health (Wales) Measure.
1. COCAPP is the short title for the NIHR Health Services and Delivery Research Programme-funded Cross-national comparative study of recovery-focused mental health care planning and coordination. Information about this research project, including an accessible summary, can be found at: http://www.nets.nihr.ac.uk/projects/hsdr/11200412
2. COCAPP is led by Professor Alan Simpson at City University London. The team includes researchers based at Cardiff and Swansea Universities, and an independent service user researcher (Alison Faulkner).
3. Set against the background of the care programme approach (CPA) in England and, now, care and treatment plans (CTP) in Wales following the introduction of part 2 of the Measure our broad aim in COCAPP is to find out how care is planned and organised in community mental health services. We are interested to know whether and how care planning and coordination focus on people’s recovery and is conducted in a
personalised way. We are doing this by looking at how care coordinators assess, plan and coordinate care on a day-to-day basis. We are investigating whether staff work in partnership with users and carers, how they plan service users’ care, and how they work to address that care plan.
4. Qualitative and quantitative data are being generated across six sites, two of which are in Wales. Interviews with service user participants are being conducted by members of the research team with personal experience of mental ill-health and of using services.
5. The project also includes a meta-narrative review of the literature on care planning and care coordination in community mental health.
6. The Committee may also be interested to learn of this research team's additional project, recently funded by the same NIHR programme and (in this case) generating data about care planning and care coordination in inpatient mental health settings. Information about Cross-national comparative study of recovery-focused mental health care planning in acute inpatient mental health settings (COCAPP-A) can be found here: http://www.nets.nihr.ac.uk/projects/hsdr/131075
7. The most useful thing would be for us to be able to share an accessible summary of COCAPP's findings, but we have not yet reached that stage in the study. Our project report to the NIHR is due this autumn, and following peer review a final version is scheduled for publication in spring 2015. Our report for COCAPP-A is due in autumn 2015, with final publication anticipated in the middle of 2016.
8. We nonetheless thought it important to alert the Health and Social Care Committee to the existence of these studies. Reports from both will improve understanding of care planning and care coordination, helping answer many of the questions identified in the Committee’s first theme (in Annex A of the consultation document). We anticipate findings, which we look forward to sharing in time, will prove useful for policy and services.
Kind regards
Dr Ben Hannigan
Reader in Mental Health Nursing
School of Healthcare Sciences
Cardiff University
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX