About | Avoidable Harm in Mental Health Social Care

About

This digital interface presents service user experiences of mental health social care that can lead to avoidable social and psychological harm, the harm impacts that can arise and their recommendations for harm minimisation. These components form an evidence-based, user-defined model of avoidable harm in mental health social care and its minimisation.

The model was developed in several stages:

A scoping review of peer reviewed journal papers and a ‘grey literature’ review on the experiences of mental health social care service users in England.
A synthesis of the findings from the two reviews to create an initial user-defined model of avoidable harm.
Focus groups to develop the model and to make recommendations for harm minimisation.
An England-wide online survey to further refine the model. The survey asked service users whether they had experienced the harms identified to date, to rank the urgency of addressing each source of harm and order the importance of implementing harm minimisation recommendations.
An expert Advisory Group of people with lived experience of using and/or providing social care and mental health support was consulted at each stage.

The project was carried out by a team of service user/survivor researchers.

Aim

This digital interface was created with mental health social care practitioners and educators. The aim is to provide an information resource for all those concerned with mental health social care so they can use the research evidence to minimise risk of avoidable harm and improve service user experiences of services and support.

The site can be used to:

Help social care and social work practitioners and service users recognise, understand and address avoidable harm in mental health social care.
Support mental health social care and social work practitioners to use service user experiential evidence to inform their practice.
Inform the teaching and training of mental health social care and social work practitioners.

Downloadable Format

Click here to download.

One Page Infographic

Click here to download.

Acknowledgments

Principal Investigator: Dr Sarah Carr, independent researcher.

Co-Investigators: Dr Angela Sweeney, King’s College London and Tina Coldham, independent researcher.

Research Assistant: Georgie Hudson, King’s College London.

Design & illustrations: Traumascapes.

We would like to thank the research participants who so generously shared their experiences with us and the practitioners and educators who helped to create this resource. We would also like to thank the study’s Advisory Group for their vital support and advice throughout the study.

Funding acknowledgement statement

This resource is based on independent research funded by the National Institute for Health Research School for Social Care Research (NIHR SSCR). The views expressed are those of the authors and not necessarily those of the NIHR SSCR, the National Institute for Health Research or the Department of Health and Social Care.

We would like to acknowledge the support of the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Maudsley Biomedical Research Centre at South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust and King’s College London. The views expressed are those of the author(s) and not necessarily those of the NHS, the National Institute for Health Research or the Department of Health and Social Care.

Ethical approval for the research was obtained from the Social Care Research Ethics Committee (ref: 20/IEC08/0010, July 2020).

Suggested Citation

[To be agreed]

Contact us