NHS Berkshire West commissioned the Talking Therapies service as part of a national “Improving Access to Psychological Therapies” initiative. The PCT provided an additional £2.3m each year for local mental health services, responding to comments from GPs, patients and carers about the gap in access to psychological services, formerly largely restricted to the acutely ill or those with serious mental illness.
Talking Therapies, provided by Berkshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust, enables people who would not previously have had an NHS service to access a range of evidence-based treatments, including guided self-help, book prescribing, computerised cognitive behavioural therapy, one-to-one therapies and wellbeing groups.
How it works
Forty therapists have been recruited to deliver the new range of evidence based therapies, to which patients can self refer. Patient outcomes are central to the service. These are reported both as clinical evidence of reduced depression and anxiety, and through patients reporting that Talking Therapies have successfully helped them to achieve specific goals in their lives - an innovative method of assessing the efficacy of NHS services. The PCT had to overcome issues of capacity through managing expectations when therapists were undergoing training during the initial stages of the programme.
The PCT is continually working with health and social care services and local communities both to improve knowledge of the new service and to develop skills around using these entirely new options and making choices between them, in a service which can now see people who previously would have had no access.
Developments have included linking with BME workers to improve access services for disadvantaged communities and the service developments for the full range of communities within the PCT.
What it has achieved
The plan was that by March 2011 106 people would had come off benefits and statutory sick-pay. The service has surpassed this plan and has already enabled 151 to move off sick pay and benefits. The rate of progress is improving as the service develops, with 75 people reporting coming off benefits in the first quarter of 2010/11.
Ninety three per cent of those responding to patient experience questionnaires said that they were satisfied or very satisfied with the service. The capacity of the new services has increased substantially and quickly as staff complete their training. Even though the service is still not at full capacity, there has already been a significant increase so that an additional 6,000 patients a year are now able to access Talking Therapies, as well as the 1,000 using the other primary care mental health services.
The service will contribute to the PCT’s Quality and Efficiency programmes and the PCT is now carrying out further research on the impact of the service, including studying the prevalence of diagnosed and undiagnosed long term conditions among service users, and researching the degree to which the introduction of talking therapies has lessened pressure on acute and primary care services.
Further information
If you would like further information on this case study, please contact Elizabeth Wade, Head of Commissioning Policy and Membership at elizabeth.wade@nhsconfed.org.