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Centre for Policy on Ageing | |
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Social workers as members of community mental health teams for older people
— what is the added value? | | Author(s) | Michele Abendstern, Susan Tucker, Mark Wilberforce |
| Journal title | British Journal of Social Work, vol 46, no 1, January 2016 |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press, January 2016 |
| Pages | pp 63-80 |
| Source | www.bjsw.oxfordjournals.org |
| Keywords | Social workers ; Coordination ; Interaction [welfare services] ; Mental health [elderly] ; Psychiatric treatment ; Community care ; Multi disciplinary. |
| Annotation | Social workers have worked with older people with mental ill health in multidisciplinary teams for many years, but research regarding their contribution is sparse. This article draws on qualitative data from semi-structured staff interviews from a multiple case study of community mental health teams (CMHTs) for older people, some with and others without social worker members. Interviews included questions about team roles and the impact of the presence or absence of social workers on team functioning. A grounded theory approach was adopted to analyse the data, enabling issues of importance to interviewees to emerge. Non-social work CMHT staff were found to place a high value on social worker team membership due to their specific skills, knowledge and values, and with regard to communication pathways. Social workers and other team members' views were found to differ regarding whether social workers within CMHTs should operate as generalists or specialists. The findings suggest the need for formal structures extending beyond the co-location of multidisciplinary staff; appropriate and sufficient supervision for social work team members; and the development of more workable and direct referral systems between CMHTs and social services adult social work teams. (RH). |
| Accession Number | CPA-160212200 A |
| Classmark | QR: QAJ: QK6: D: LP: PA: 3DM |
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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