Guest Editorial
| Date | 01 March 2006 |
| Pages | 2-3 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/13619322200600001 |
| Published date | 01 March 2006 |
| Author | Androulla Johnstone |
| Subject Matter | Health & social care |
Guest Editorial
not they are providing good quality, cost-effective
services. However, at the root of most of our work is
the conundrum of turning the policy ‘what’ into the
service delivery ‘how’. Our experience is that an
independent, expert, evidenced-based organisation
can help to make a positive difference. When service
energy is utilised to generate solutions instead of
finding data to support a target, things can, and do,
change.
As a registered charity, HASCAS is concerned to
disseminate its findings on the challenges facing
mental health service development today as well as
stimulating debate on the practicalities, realities and
way forwardof providing good quality mental health
care. To further this objective we hosted a colloquium
in January this year to provide an opportunity for
people engaged in the mental health world to take
part freely in an intellectual and practical enquiry into
the current state of play of mental health service
issues, outside the confines of the organisational
‘political’ constraints in which they may find
themselves in moreusual daily circumstances.
The conclusions of the colloquium are available on
the HASCAS website and a synopsis will be published
in a future issue of the Mental Health Review.We also
plan to hold other events which we would like to
make available to all subscribers of the Mental Health
Review.At no cost HASCAS will send to subscribers
key HASCAS publications as and when they are
produced. We would also be very happy to provide
you with information over the phone or by email;
please do not hesitate to contact us. Areas in which we
have been working extensively include:
■direct payments
■medium-secure units
■CAMH service development
■mental health service commissioning
■psychological therapies
■service reviews
■stroke service reviews
■acute care fragile elderly reviews
■service users and carers
2The Mental Health Review Volume 11 Issue 1 March 2006 ©Pavilion Publishing (Brighton) 2006
tis with great pleasure that I write my first
editorial for the Mental Health Review.At the time of
writing, at the beginning of the New Year, the Health
and Social Care Advisory Service (HASCAS) has been
giving serious thought to where mental health service
development across the country actually is at the
current time, and also where it needs to be. This time
of year is traditionally a period of reflection where
both personal and collective stocktaking takes place.
When it comes to stocktaking HASCAS occupies a
privileged position for assessing the state of England’s
mental health provision. Over the past two years we
have worked with 60 NHS trusts together with many
government departments and public sector
organisations. When taking stock we have consistently
asked ourselves: ‘What is rhetoric and what is reality?’
Can things ‘only get better’ as Mr Blair once urged us
so optimistically? Are things in fact better, or are the
underlying ‘how’ factors far moredifficult than the
Department of Health ‘what’ would lead us to
believe?
An important component of HASCAS’s privileged
position stems from the fact that as an organisation we
areentirely independent. We are independent of
government funding, policy, targets and spin. As an
expert evidence-based organisation we are often at the
edge of policy rather than being at the forefront of
policy implementation. Our work and findings are
independent, objective and well researched.
Independence is to be highly prized, particularly at
the present time. The National Institute for Mental
Health in England (NIMHE) is verymuch the
Department of Health’sorgan for implementation.
The Healthcare Commission is now preoccupied with
the performance management of government targets.
Many leading organisations are primarily concerned
with the implementation and regulation of
government policy and produce statistics that are, by
their very nature, highly political. Notwithstanding the
key role played by such organisations and the
importance of their findings, they can never be
described as independent.
Rhetoric or reality? When HASCAS is consulted,
our commissioners usually want to know whether or
I
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