Time to invest in developing community mental health services

To report on the evaluation of publicly funded community mental health services in two New South Wales health districts.

Qualitative and quantitative data from 28 publicly funded adult community mental health teams in two NSW health districts were gathered using structured interviews, benchmarking surveys, focus groups and online questionnaires.

The community mental health services studied lacked a coherent strategic and recovery oriented framework or model of care for service delivery. There was evidence of poor role definition at the team level, resulting in duplication and inefficiency. There were inadequate staffing levels for stated objectives, a lack of training and continuing education in evidence based intervention, poor consumer and family participation in service design, and no development and monitoring of meaningful outcome measures.

This review and benchmarking study highlights the need for mental health policy implementation to be further supported with: development of a service delivery framework outlining essential components of a specialist community mental health system; operational guidance to enable effective team specialisation in accordance with research; investment in practitioner training to support the development of evidence based practice; and processes to ensure effective consumer and carer participation in developing recovery oriented services.