New guidance to ensure people with both a mental health and substancemisuse problem receive the treatment they need has been published forconsultation by the Welsh Government.
Specifically, thenew guidance aims to ensure services deliver:
- Prevention and early intervention – preventing problems from occurring in the first place and, where problems exist, ensure early detection and intervene to prevent problems from escalating;
- A holistic, person centred approach – services should be built around the individual’s needs (including language) and in recognition of their individual strengths and abilities;
- Good communication – for efficient care and treatment, it is vital agencies communicate effectively with each other and with service users and their families;
- Co-production – ensuring service users, and where appropriate their families, are involved in establishing the outcomes to be achieved by the agreed interventions;
- Prudent healthcare – delivering evidence-based care, tailored to the specific needs of the individual; avoiding treatment where it may cause harm and is unlikely to benefit the service user or is wasteful, and maximising the use of resources by ensuring that the workforce is operating at the top of its competence.
Deputy Health Minister, Vaughan Gething said:
“People with both a substance misuse and mental healthproblem frequently have complex needs which need a co-ordinated approach from arange of primary and secondary care services, delivered in both statutory andnon-statutory settings.
“The Welsh Government is firmly committed to substantiallyimproving people’s chances of recovery by driving improvements in collaborationbetween services. This requires health services, social services, the thirdsector and, where appropriate, justice agencies to work with service users andtheir families and carers to improve the outcomes achieved through serviceinterventions.”