Date: 22nd November
Categories:
This week, Harbour Housing welcomed Tom Webb, the Dual Diagnosis Strategy Lead from Recovery College Cornwall, to provide a training and discussion session on Dual Diagnosis Awareness.
An impressive number of staff attended from a variety of services throughout Cornwall despite the morning’s severe weather conditions. This highlighted how vital these training sessions are and how these discussions can generate options through first-hand feedback to ensure that specific needs are met successfully in the future.
The Dual Diagnosis Awareness Sessions are open to all Professionals working across the system whose work may affect people with co-occurring mental health difficulties and experiencing active addiction. These sessions aim to develop a broader understanding of what is meant by the term ‘Dual Diagnosis’ and to highlight best practices for care and support.
The opposite of addiction is connection
During this session, staff also explored the updated strategic guidance in Cornwall, and what this means to each service.
Previously in Cornwall, services were only supporting individuals who were meeting the current threshold. However, there are many complexities in this area, highlighting that so many individuals were being missed due to their dual diagnoses. Some of the challenges that were faced were from a previous strategy ‘Ambition for inclusion’.
After thorough discussion, it was determined that this particular strategy had been unsuccessful, due to the difficulty in getting it up and running and the complexities that left it difficult to understand, especially within a system that was failing.
Current challenges
Current Transformation
A new mental health transformation is taking place with input from the voluntary sector and advice from the NHS for individuals to receive in-house clinical support.
The hope is to put one panel of commissioners in place, who can structure the responsibility of all services so that no person is turned away and everyone can be referred to the correct service.
The Guiding Principals
Developed by the multi-agency Dual Diagnosis steering group, the principles express the agreements about how to seek to work together to improve the experiences of people impacted by co-occurring conditions.
Some of the points discussed within the session were individuals, once having a support worker assigned, should work together throughout the whole journey with a client. To do this, services and practitioners need to commit to supporting one another and improve communication systems.
Harbour Housing Team Lead suggested an online directory of mental health services for easy access and regular updates of referrals, care packages and funding. This would considerably benefit services, individuals and support workers and be less time-consuming.
At present, there are some published directories available, but these are extremely time-consuming and hard to navigate with services and with funding constantly being updated, especially when staff are new to the sector/job role.
During the session there were many emotive stories of clients that have been let down by the current system, especially seen in our outreach services for those individuals with experiences of poor mental health. This not only affects individuals but all staff and services involved who are constantly working hard, to manage associated risks.
Harbour Housing are pleased to have hosted the first session of this series, at their training offices in St Austell, and are privileged to be involved in spreading awareness of Dual Diagnosis and having the opportunity to discuss options that can be provided for the future.
Further reading:
Delgadillo, J, Sept 2012,Drug and alcohol dependence, Vol 125, Issues 1-2, pgs 37-42.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0376871612000993
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