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Centre for Policy on Ageing | |
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| The challenge of evaluating mental health services for older people | | Author(s) | Niall McCrae, Sube Banerjee |
| Journal title | International Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry, vol 26, no 6, June 2011 |
| Pages | pp 551-557 |
| Source | http://www.interscience.wiley.com/journal/gps |
| Keywords | Mental health [elderly] ; Services ; Evaluation. |
| Annotation | Despite a consensus on the need to expand service capacity and function in mental health care for older people, evidence on models of service development is limited. The authors suggest that while clinicians move towards evidence-based practice, health service management and commissioning tends to continue to be driven by political expediency. In attempting to answer the question `Does it work?' it is necessary to remember that programmes do not work; people make them work. Evaluators need to look beyond the formal aspects of the programme and understand change from each participant's perspective. Mixed methods were applied to evaluating two developments in mental health services for older people run by the South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust: Improving Quality of Care for Older People in Lambeth, and Croydon Memory Service. Drawing on these two case studies, the authors consider how evaluation of service innovations can inform policy and practice. They suggest that combining formative and summative methodology improves the contribution of evaluation of service development to the evidence base and that the realist evaluation model is useful in generating theory from complex interventions in a unique context. It is concluded that evaluation should involve both measurement and meaning when judging the value of an intervention. (JL). |
| Accession Number | CPA-110822004 A |
| Classmark | D: I: 4C |
Data © Centre for Policy on Ageing |
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| ...from the Ageinfo database published by Centre for Policy on Ageing. |
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