Including families and carers: an evaluation of the family liaison service on inpatient psychiatric wards in Somerset, UK

Abstract

Purpose -National mental health policies in the UK have a common theme of seeking to develop working partnerships between people who use mental health services, their families and carers and professionals. In Somerset, following a staff training programme, a Family Liaison Service has been developed whereby systemically trained staff work alongside inpatient staff to hold family meetings as part of the assessment and admission process on all wards for working age adults and older people. This article aims to focus on this initiative.Design/methodology/approach -The article considers the development of the Family Liaison Service and evaluates its progress based on audit data, feedback from families using the service, and a survey of staff experience. Issues raised in developing family inclusive services are discussed.Findings -Evaluation of the service suggests that, although there is still progress to be made, considerable success has been achieved in embedding the service on inpatient units with a substantial increase in meetings held between staff and families. Feedback from families is positive and staff report increased confidence in engaging with families and carers.Originality/value -This article describes a transferable model for the implementation of national policy to develop working partnerships with families and carers in mainstream mental health services.

Improving partnerships with families and carers in in‐patient mental health services for older people: a staff training programme and family liaison service

“…Feedback from families attending meetings has been very positive (Gore and Stanbridge, ) and semi‐structured interviews with staff also report their positive experience of meetings (Rapsey and Stanbridge, ). For a full description of the family liaison service and an evaluation of its implementation on all adult and older people's psychiatric wards in Somerset see Stanbridge ().…”

Family-inclusive practice in a psychiatric intensive care unit

“…Where family involvement has been attempted in the past, it has often been in nurse- or psychologist-led services 10 , 16 . We found no previous literature describing examples of psychiatrist-led family clinics.…”

“…However, the NAS suggests that many carers do not receive the information and support they need. 4 Studies looking at why families are not included in care have found a number of reasons: time constraints, 16 staff feeling worried about saying the wrong thing, 17 staff not seeing it as part of their role to provide a service for carers, 18 and patients not giving or not being able to give consent. 17 We hope that the family clinic evaluated in this paper provides evidence of how these barriers can be meaningfully addressed and negotiated.…”

“…9 Where family involvement has been attempted in the past, it has often been in nurse-or psychologist-led services. 10,16 We found no previous literature describing examples of psychiatrist-led family clinics. However, the results of our evaluation showed that in this acute setting, families especially valued the input of the consultant psychiatrist.…”

Family therapy and schizophrenia: a brief theoretical overview and a framework for clinical practice

“…Another strategy is to develop a stepped-care family service (Burbach 2012, 2013b, 2015) so that the needs of families can be met with the least intensive intervention, utilising the ‘sufficiency principle’ (Cohen 2008). In the Somerset Partnership NHS Foundation Trust we have found that the employment of a few family specialists whose remit includes the training of frontline mental health staff in family-inclusive practice and family interventions has been very effective (Stanbridge 2012, 2014).…”