Snapshot: safer mental health services

Each year over a million people receive care from specialist mental health services, and there are approximately 160,000 admissions to hospital for mental illness.

Mental health service users, especially when acutely ill, are vulnerable to a number of potential risks, including from their care or treatment. This makes them a particularly vulnerable group of patients within the NHS.

The Health Foundation’s Improving patient safety in mental health programme has been supporting four mental health providers to improve services and reduce harm
for service users.

The programme began in May 2009 and runs for 15 months. It encourages collaboration and the sharing of knowledge across mental health services in four participating sites:

• Devon Partnership NHS Trust
• Hampshire Partnership NHS Trust
• South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust
• NHS Tayside.

This publication is a summary of the experiences and learning from this programme so far. It includes background information, the teams' programme of work and their learning so far.

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