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Care home liaison team
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About the service
The care home liaison team provides assessment and intervention for older people (65+) with mental health needs who live in a care home.
The team also helps care home staff to provide the appropriate care for older people with mental health needs by offering specialist advice and support.
The team supports appropriate admissions to mental health wards and placement of individuals in care homes and assesses whether people would benefit from support to live independently.
Why would someone choose the service?
- Care home audits undertaken every three years indicate overall satisfaction with the team’s input.
- The team receives regular compliments and expressions of gratitude from families of service users who have been satisfied with the care their loved one has received.
- The service has a team of people with many different roles to offer effective support to service users e.g medical staff, occupational therapist, dietician.
Staff you may meet
- Dietitians use the science of food to help people to make good choices about food and lifestyle. Nutrition is an important part of recovery and wellbeing. All service users admitted to a Trust ward have their nutritional state assessed.
- There are more than 60 different specialities that doctors work within the NHS. Each is unique but there are many characteristics which are common. Roles range from working in a hospital to being based in the community as a GP.
- Nurses who choose to specialise in the mental health branch of nursing work with GPs, psychiatrists, psychologists, and others, to help care for patients. Increasingly, care is given in the community, with mental health nurses visiting patients and their families at home, in residential centres, in prisons or in specialist clinics or units.
- Occupational therapy is the assessment and treatment of physical and psychiatric conditions using specific, purposeful activity to prevent disability and promote independent function in all aspects of daily life.
- Physiotherapists help people to improve their range of movement in order to promote health and well being. This can help people to live more independently.
Why a professional should choose the service
- All non-urgent referrals for assessment are seen within 14 calendar days. This meets the regional CQUIN Indicator 2.
- Prevention of inappropriate admissions to mental health wards.
- Working with other services and organisations to ensure adequate standards in care homes, identify failing standards and abuse and support safeguarding processes – both individual and large scale.
Support offered
- Care coordination (involving the service user in their care plans)
- Medication review
- Advice and support to care home staff, including how to minimise risk
- Occupational therapy
- Anxiety management
- Advice on managing the symptoms of dementia
- Advice on managing the symptoms of depression
- Life story work (techniques used to look back on a person’s life to help them with memory and reminiscence)
- Advice on the care home environment
- Working with families to provide information
- Referral to other services and organisations for further help
- Dietary and nutritional advice
- Physiotherapy
Outcomes
- Improved wellbeing and quality of life
- Minimising risk
- Care in the most appropriate setting
- Appropriate admission to mental health wards
- Care home staff who feel empowered and knowledgeable
- Signposting to other services or organisations for further support e.g. palliative care
- Families feel their loved one’s needs are being met
- Services and organisations working together to provide the best possible care
Referrals accepted from:
A & E, Carers/family, CMHTs, Consultants, GP staff, GPs, Hospital staff, Local authority staff, Other NHS services, Other Trust services, Patients(self-referral), Single Point of Access team
Referrals also accepted from:
Referrals also accepted from care home staff.
Referral criteria:
Individuals must be aged over 65 living permanently in a care home under the care of a Kirklees GP presenting signs of deteriorating mental health or experiencing a mental health condition which shows signs of escalating risk. People aged under 65 with a diagnosis of dementia are also accepted.