By Suzanne Traynor @Traynors
Associate Professor Mental Health (Practice) at Middlesex University & My Care Academy.

The Care Programme Approach (CPA) is the way mental health services work with service users. Our relationship with the service user is at the centre of this process and it is based upon the principles of recovery.  Enablement draws on these well-recognised principles of recovery but also includes social inclusion and community integration to maximise resilience.

All staff need the opportunity to learn about CPA and share best practice examples across the Trust.  A working group made up of service users, clinical staff, My Care Academy staff and the communication team at BEH-MHT came together to start the process of thinking about CPA and share ideas of best practice. Our ambition was to create a unit of learning that would meet the learning needs of all staff and would strongly focus on best practice determined by service users and staff.

CPA includes the following:

• An assessment which is a review of all the service users physical and mental health needs
• A Care coordinator who is a named member of staff that will work with the service user
• A care plan which explains how the needs of the service user will be managed and all those involved in their care.
• A crisis plan that will clearly explain what will happen if the service user become acutely unwell or needs additional support urgently.

When developing this CPA learning unit, we agreed that we wanted to highlight the following:

• Support and promote the importance of our relationship with service users
• Working within a framework of recovery
• Focusing on the strengths and goals of service users
• Understanding what matters to service users
• Care plans are always created in partnership with service user
• Supporting the service users within their social network of family and friends

Following our initial meeting we then progressed working in smaller groups and developed the unit through many iterations based on feedback and comments from the larger working group. Information about CPA is available on the BEH-MHT website as well as a leaflet for service users. We have now completed this unit of learning and it is now available on your Trust ESR.