Essential Shared
Capabilities:
The aim
of the Essential Shared Capabilities (ESC) is to set out the shared capabilities
that all staff working in mental health services should achieve as best practice
as
part
of their
pre-qualifying training. Thus the ESC should
form part of the basic building blocks for all staff who work in mental health
whether they are professionally qualified or not and whether they work in
the NHS, the social care field or the private and voluntary sectors. The
ESC are also likely to have value for all staff who work in services which
have contact with people with mental health problems.
The development
of the ESC is a joint "National Institute for Mental Health England" and
"Sainsbury Centre for Mental Health" Project. It builds on the work of
the SCMH Capable Practitioner Framework, copies of which can be downloaded
from
www.scmh.org.uk. Whilst elements
of the ESC can be found amongst a variety of capability and competency
frameworks, what they do not contain is that single, concise list
of essential capabilities being asked for by staff and service users.
The Ten Essential
Shared Capabilities are:
-
Working in Partnership. Developing and maintaining constructive working relationships
with service users, carers, families, colleagues, lay people and wider community
networks. Working positively with any tensions created by conflicts of interest
or aspiration that may arise between the partners in care.
-
Respecting Diversity. Working in partnership with service
users, carers, families and colleagues to provide care and interventions
that not only
make a positive difference but also do so in ways that respect and
value diversity including age, race, culture, disability, gender, spirituality
and sexuality.
-
Practising Ethically. Recognising the rights and aspirations
of service users and their families, acknowledging power differentials
and minimising
them whenever possible. Providing treatment and care that is accountable
to service users and carers within the boundaries prescribed by national
(professional), legal and local codes of ethical practice.
-
Challenging Inequality. Addressing the causes and consequences of stigma,
discrimination, social inequality and exclusion on service users, carers
and mental health
services. Creating, developing or maintaining valued social roles for people
in the communities they come from.
-
Promoting Recovery. Working in partnership to provide
care and treatment that enables service users and carers to tackle mental
health problems with
hope
and optimism and to work towards a valued lifestyle within and beyond
the limits of any mental health problem.
-
Identifying
People’s Needs and
Strengths. Working in partnership to gather information to agree health
and social care needs
in the context
of the preferred lifestyle and aspirations of service users their families,
carers and friends.
-
Providing Service User Centred Care. Negotiating achievable and meaningful
goals; primarily from the perspective of service users and their families.
Influencing and seeking the means to achieve these goals and clarifying the
responsibilities of the people who will provide any help that is needed,
including systematically evaluating outcomes and achievements.
-
Making a Difference. Facilitating access to and delivering the best quality,
evidence-based, values-based health and social care interventions to meet
the needs and aspirations of service users and their families and carers.
-
Promoting Safety and Positive Risk Taking. Empowering the person to decide
the level of risk they are prepared to take with their health and safety.
This includes working with the tension between promoting safety and positive
risk
taking, including assessing and dealing with possible risks for service users,
carers, family members, and the wider public.
-
Personal
Development and Learning. Keeping up-to-date with changes in practice
and participating in life-long learning,
personal
and professional development
for one’s self and colleagues through supervision, appraisal and
reflective practice.
Click to view the Department of Health document "The
Ten Essential Shared Capabilities"
The
University of Lincolnshire has been charged with reviewing the impact
of the ESC and other related materials on the experience of people using and
working within mental
health services through their Centre for Clinical and Academic
Workforce Innovation.
There are
lots of documents and information avaialbe from the CAWI website. You are
asked to register,
which is free, for the information, by completing the simple form on the
site.
Following this, you will then be able to access the following articles:
- Essential Shared Capabilities (Version 2)
- Creating and Inspiring Hope - Recovery (Version 2)
- Dual Diagnosis (Version 1)
- Race Equality and Cultural Capability (Version 1)
Modules 1 and 2 should be completed first. Modules 3 to 6 can be completed
in any order