Blog

Loreen Chikwira explores how better listening, collaborative working with minority ethnic women and better support for link workers can improve how social prescribing supports migrant women.

Oliver Standing, Director of Collective Voice, and colleagues from the Alliance Group, explore the opportunities offered by England’s new drugs strategy, as well as the challenges that lie ahead.

Partnership working can be transformative – if it works well. Here we share two techniques, observed as part of the Healthy Communities Together programme, that can help in forming healthy partnerships.

Angela Fell, Director of Northern Heart and Soul in Wigan, outlines why we should move beyond person-centred services to a community-centred approach in order to transform people's health and wellbeing.

Data, funding and workforce – if the government wants its proposed reforms to the MHA to create change these system-wide enablers are as important as individual changes to legislation. Helen Gilburt consider the issues.

As we reach the one-year anniversary of the start of lockdown in the United Kingdom, Richard Murray outlines how a whole-system response will best support staff and patients and help to tackle inequalities.

Helen Gilburt shares her research into how mental health and social care professionals make decisions around whether to detain people with mental disorders under the Mental Health Act or the Mental Capacity Act – Deprivation of Liberty Safeguards. Her research uncovered a range of understandings and misunderstandings which impact on practice.

How can NHS services use their facilities to better support social prescribing? Ben Collins highlights what’s needed to make NHS sites more welcoming spaces for individuals and communities.

Providing joined-up services that address people’s physical and mental health needs has long been a challenge. Jihad Malasi asks whether primary care networks could be the answer to providing holistic primary care mental health services.

Helen Gilburt reflects on the experiences of staff and people with mental health problems during the first months of Covid-19 and urges mental health services to learn from those experiences to plan for the future.

The Covid-19 outbreak has exposed gaps in psychosocial support for health care workers. Mary Docherty, Consultant Liaison Psychiatrist at King’s College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust London, considers the action needed to address those gaps and meet the needs of the workforce in the future.

A resilient health and care system is about more than national action. Sally Warren shares a vision for building local resilience that would allow the health and care system to respond effectively to future crises.

Much media attention has been paid to how acute services are tackling Covid-19, but what about community health and care services? Anna Charles considers the impact of the outbreak on these often overlooked services and the role they might play in the next phase of the response.

New standards aim to improve urgent care in the community, but how easily can they be delivered? Anna Charles considers how workforce, social care and the pace of change might pose challenges for implementing these welcome plans.

People who have experienced trauma face a number of barriers to accessing health care. Deborah Fenney explains why a trauma-informed approach is essential for supporting a group that currently face poor health outcomes.

New Zealander Martin Hefford reflects on his time in the UK and ponders the questions about primary care reform that arose from his conversations with those working in primary care, secondary care and the third sector.

Ambitions to improve the quality of mental health care will fail if they are not accompanied by plans to address staff shortages. Helen Gilburt looks at the effect of staff shortages on staff, patients and quality of care.

As this year’s party conference season comes to a close, what have we learned about the main parties’ priorities for health and social care? Richard Murray weighs up the key commitments, from funding and the NHS workforce to social care reform.

Rising demand for services and systemic staff shortages are putting NHS staff under increasing pressure. What impact is this having on sickness absence rates in the NHS, and what can be done to reduce the pressure on staff?

Julia Thrift, Projects Director for the Town & Country Planning Association, explores the relationship between town planning and population health, and how the lessons of NHS England’s Healthy New Towns programme should inform future developments to ensure people are able healthier lives and reduce health inequalities.