Presentation London May 2011: The Future Role of Support Workers & Assistant Practitioners in Mental Health and Social Care

2011 looks like it will be busy:

In May I have been invited to present the Health Care Domains Model at a conference organised by M&K Update.

The Future Role of

Support Workers & Assistant Practitioners in

Mental Health and Social Care

My presentation will include:

Why does ‘having’ a framework matter?

• Explaining the health care domains model, its structure, knowledge domains and applications.
• How the model can support HCSWs to address personalised, integrated and holistic care. 
• The model in theory, practice and management – an illustration.

 There will be 10 minutes for Q&A too.

This is a great prospect as with Colombia this coming week.

Health Literacy: A Public Health concern? 1-day Conference, Manchester, UK

Venue: Chancellors Hotel and Conference Centre (Manchester)

Friday 10th June 2011

Join us for our first national Health Literacy Research Conference.

Health literacy is -

‘the cognitive and social skills which determine the motivation and ability of individuals to gain access to, understand, and use information in ways which promote and maintain good health’.

We welcome applications for oral presentation or posters on Health Literacy research and development. The abstract submission guidelines are available from the website http://www.healthliteracy.org.uk/

or Lucy McDonald: mcdonall AT lsbu.ac.uk

The conference will include 2 plenary sessions with international health literacy

keynote speakers and a panel discussion.

Cost: £60 per day

My source: Lucy McDonald

KT-EQUAL future events - Ageing Research and Design 4 Health Conf.

Dear colleague,

KT-EQUAL is planning lots of interesting events in the next few months focused on aspects of ageing research.

Below are a few upcoming events that may be of interest to you, more information can always be found on our website.

Upcoming workshops include topics such as -

• digital inclusion
• ethical dilemmas
• and creative societies.

A flyer is available with more information about these exciting free events.

The I'dgo consortium has also confirmed the full programme for their seminar on An international perspective on the Built Environment for an Ageing Population: Issues in maintaining access to outdoor places on the 16th February 2011.

Another upcoming conference which is still accepting papers* is the Design for Health Conference in Sheffield Hallam University on the 13th-15th July 2011
http://www.design4health.org.uk/

We look forward to seeing you at some of our events in the future.

Best Wishes

Helen Haigh
KT-EQUAL Co-ordinator
University of Sheffield

PJ adds: *Kirsty Christer at SHU contacted me re. D4H to advise that submissions are open until 7th Feb.

Bursary applications - 17th Oxford Workshop on Evidence-Based Practice

Dear Colleagues,

The Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine is offering three free bursary places on the -

17th Oxford Workshop on Teaching Evidence-Based Practice.

Applicants will need to cover their travel and accommodation costs.

All applicants should send a covering letter with their application (which can be downloaded at www.cebm.net) detailing their current involvement with Evidence-Based Practice and outlining what they would do with the knowledge gained on the workshop. Applicants should also enclose a current C.V..

All applications should be sent to me at the address at the bottom of this email. Closing date for applications is 31st March 2011.

I should be grateful if you would disseminate this email to any and all interested parties.

The 17th Oxford Workshop on Teaching Evidence-Based Practice will be held 5th - 9th September 2011 at St. Hugh's College, Oxford, UK and is aimed at clinicians and other health care professionals, including those involved in mental health, who already have some knowledge of critical appraisal and experience in the practice of evidence-based health care and who want to explore issues around teaching evidence-based medicine.

There will be two main themes running throughout the workshop:

Teaching will be addressed through the exploration of different educational models for teaching evidence-based practice and identification and discussion of issues of pedagogy, curriculum design development and maintenance. The aim will be to promote the teaching of evidence-based health care at your home institution.

Personal Development will be addressed by offering guidance and help in extending and advancing participants' existing critical appraisal and teaching skills.

All good wishes,

Olive

Olive Goddard
Centre and Editorial Manager
Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine
Department of Primary Health Care
Old Road Campus, Headington
Oxford, OX3 7LF
............................................................
email: olive.goddard AT dphpc.ox.ac.uk
 www.cebmh.com

My source: CEBMH-MEMBERS AT JISCMAIL.AC.UK

Before you measure ....

Fitness-to-work tests to be reformed after criticism

- you check your tools:

You calibrate, validate and balance ...

strengths - weaknesses

functional - diagnostic

humanistic - mechanistic
individual - group
purpose - policy
practice - process

physical - emotional

person centred - policy centered
sad (?) - (you will be -) happy

Additional links:
How to assess happiness? A tale of three measures
WWF: Manifesto - The Politics of Happiness
Frank Furedi: Why the ‘politics of happiness’ makes me mad

HCI 2011 Health, Wealth and Happiness Call for Papers

The 25th British Conference on Human-Computer Interaction (HCI2011)

July 4th - 8th, 2011 at Northumbria University, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, UK.

The HCI Educators conference, Workshops and Tutorials will be held on 4th and 5th July, 2011 and a Doctorial Consortium on the 5th July. The main conference runs from the 6th-8th July, 2011. HCI 2011 is organised by the PaCT Lab (Northumbria University) in cooperation with the British Computer Society.

This year we will be looking for papers to put in our alt.hci sessions. So if you think your work doesn't usually make it into this conference then maybe this year is your year.

Accepted papers will be published by BCS in the annual conference proceedings, freely available online in BCS Electronic Workshops in Computing (eWiC) and will also be included in the ACM digital library.

Important Dates:

• Full Paper and Workshop submission: 21st January, 2011
• Workshop notification of acceptance: 11th February, 2011
• Work in Progress and alt.chi submission: 18th February, 2011
• Short and Posters  submission: 18th February, 2011
• Demos and Experiences submission: 18th February, 2011
• Doctoral Consortium 18th February, 2011
• Panels: 18th February, 2011
• Notification of Acceptance for all other categories: 8th April 2011
• Camera-ready copy for proceedings required by 6th May 2011

Deadline for author registration: 4th May 2011

Conference: 4th July - 8th July, 2011

Conference Scope and Description:

Human Computer Interaction is a key area of computing. This is the leading conference in the field of Human Computer Interaction in the UK. It covers the design, evaluation and application of techniques and approaches for interacting with devices and services.  HCI is now on its 25th conference and at this anniversary we ask you to reflect on our theme of Health, Wealth and Happiness. Technology is posed to play a growing part in our health and maintaining well being into older age; wealth manifests itself in many ways, many of which we do not always recognise - relationships, richness of life experience, creativity and innovation, knowledge and qualities of character. Lastly is there a relationship between happiness and technology use, will more gadgets increase our well being? And as ever contributions in any aspect of HCI are welcome.

Suggested topics:

We solicit original research and technical papers not published elsewhere including the following topics:

• Affective interaction
• Aesthetic interaction
• Art and interaction
• Bodily interaction
• Cyber-relationships, sex and eroticism
• Design and Evaluation methods
• Ethnographic and field studies
• Ethics and HCI
• Experience Design
• Fun and Play
• Health informatics and technology
• Human values
• Information visualization and presentation
• Interaction Criticism
• Moods, meditation and relaxation
• Musical and audio interaction
• Novel interaction techniques and devices
• Privacy, Security and Trust
• Social networking
• Spirituality and Beliefs
• Sustainability and HCI
• Ubiquitous, pervasive, and mobile interaction
• Universal design
• Usability studies
• User Experience
• Wearables and fashion
• Wellbeing and technology

Keynote Speakers

• Abigail Sellon, Microsoft Research, UK
• Gregory Abowd, Georgia Tech, USA

Paper Submission:

Submissions must be in an electronic form as PDF format. All submissions should be formatted to the ACM standard, see http://www.acm.org/sigs/publications/proceedings-templates , and will appear on-line in the BCS EWiCS series and the ACM Digital Library.

Submissions should be made through the EasyChair system, which will open for submissions in November and will be linked from the conference website http://www.hci2011.co.uk/ with detailed instructions. We have put together an international review panel. Submissions will be peer-reviewed by at least 3 peer-reviewers, selected by the appropriate chairs. Additional guidelines can be found on the conference's website.

It is a condition of acceptance that at least one author must register for each accepted paper, no later than the early bird deadline of 4th May 2011.

Launch of methods@manchester - research methods in the social sciences

methods@manchester is a web resource which brings together The University of Manchester’s internationally acclaimed expertise on social research methods. Visit www.methods.manchester.ac.uk to watch video clips of experts talking about specific methods: examples include Martin Everett’s leading work on Social Network Analysis, Wes Sharrock on Ethnomethodology, Nick Shryane on Structural Equation Modelling and Ian Plewis on Multilevel modelling.


You can also listen to a wide range of introductory methodological talks, whilst viewing associated PowerPoint presentations – for example Penny Harvey explains why and how anthropologists conduct ethnography and Vanessa May explains the rationale behind narrative analysis.

September 13 marked the start of the programme of events for the autumn semester, with seminars and short courses taking place.

On September 29 the Methods Fair includes methods-related presentations throughout the day (speakers include Martin Everett on social networks; Carol Smart on in-depth interviews; Nick Shryane on structural equation modelling); a display of posters by researchers and PhD students; stalls giving information on training opportunities, online resources, short courses and much more.

Go to the web-site www.methods.manchester.ac.uk and join the mailing list to receive a regular update on methodological events.


My source: ESA-ALL@JISCMAIL.AC.UK
Image source: http://www.methods.manchester.ac.uk/methods/sna/index.shtml

Free event 29th September 2010 Promoting the collaboration of Age research

Dear Colleagues,

We are pleased to announce a fantastic free event coming up on the 29th of September 2010 titled - "Promoting the collaboration of Age research"

The event is run by the UK Age Research Forum (UKARF) which is a strategic partnership between government, research councils and charities that aims to make a positive difference to the lives of older people through research.

The aims of the conference are:

• To highlight the best of UK research funded by collaborative working of the UKARF member organisations
• To demonstrate the benefits of collaborative working in age research
• To inform about developments in age research in the UK

Where is it taking place?

Time: 9:30am — 4:00pm
Venue: The Royal College of Physicians
11 St Andrews Place
Regent’s Park, London NW1 4LE

How to register: fill in the form attached or register online at -
http://web.me.com/magic_bean/UKARF/registration.html

KT-EQUAL will have a stand at the conference so please register for the event and drop by and say hello!

If you want to know what we are up to, register for any of our future events, or download our monographs from previous events please visit our website www.equal.ac.uk

Best Wishes
Helen Haigh
KT-EQUAL Co-ordinator
University of Sheffield

My source: Sparc/KT-EQUAL network

Retirement, memories of work & Bacon numbers

In the UK in July 2010 the much anticipated news about the government's plan to scrap the default retirement age in the UK from October 2011 throws up a complex future work place and nursing care space.

At the moment if a member of the staff in the NHS needs a psychiatric assessment and admission, then there is often a protocol that determines how their care is managed. Various factors are taken into account. For example, the work history of the person and the distance of available beds. This may entail admission for them to another area. Such arrangements help protect the staff member, their families and the local staff for whom being both carers and colleagues could be quite difficult.

Over two decades I have encountered health professionals who are diagnosed with dementia maintained in the community - in their homes - and in residential care. So far I have not known these individuals in their work capacity and professional lives. This is due in part of course to the incidence of dementia increasing with age and my previous status as a spring chicken. Today of course things have changed:

• Early onset dementia is more common as the overall older adult population rises.
• Suddenly (well at least after October 2011) we may find - despite the physical and emotional demands of the job - that the staff in residential and nursing homes are also older - working through that previous work | retirement barrier.
• There's another change: now I am a mature chicken.
• I wonder what the churn rate is in our nursing homes?
• While we usually think of high turnover for staff and the associated poor quality of care. As care and nursing homes are also businesses there are two churn rates:
• - senior and junior staff leave the sector, or move to other homes;
• - residents are moved for reasons of re-location - increased care needs, and the choices of family.

So....? Amid all this I wonder how many workers in the care sector working their extended years may potentially come across former work colleagues? This could be a delicate and haphazard negotiation. ...

Additional link:
The Oracle of Bacon

AgeWell: a one-day conference for older people

24/09/2010 | 10:00am - 3:00pm
The School of Sport & Exercise Sciences, University of Birmingham, UK

Are you 65 years or older? If so, you are invited to attend AgeWell - a free one-day event for older people.

You will learn about relevant research findings and, if you wish, comment on future studies. This will help improve ongoing and future research. No prior knowledge of research is needed. Just come and enjoy the day!

Registration is essential. More information can also be found here

My source:
http://www.newdynamics.group.shef.ac.uk/events/41

Cost savings: 4-fold literacy = care literacy

The RCN's campaign I posted yesterday highlights the belief in and potential of nurses to 'think out of the box'.

There are many people, in many walks of life who are currently racking their brains and flipcharts to come up with ideas for cutting costs. In addition to the RCN, the government has its on-line campaign with the 'Spending Challenge'.

As for nurses there is an extra rabbit to pull from the hat: improving patient care.

Media discussion about the cloned beef - food supply story this week brought a point regarding the relative scientific literacy of the general population of USA and UK. This prompted me to consider discipline based literacy, what usually passes for 'basic grounding in ...' or competency. ('Literacy' has already been corrupted, now for another kick.)

For nurses with their subject disciplines, which can be represented in the health career model - what current public sector health (and social) care requires (demands!) is care literacy.

It is the ability of nurses (and other professionals) to be aware of what happens in the two adjoining boxes, or that one remote enclosure that can simultaneously engender and deliver:

• new insights - creativity and innovation;
  
• holistic integrated care;
• care literacy;
• and - cost savings that can still improve patient care.

See also:
http://hodges-model.blogspot.com/search/label/literacy

Frontline First campaign: cost-saving innovations whilst improving patient care

Dear Peter,

Innovations are the key to saving the NHS money. Every day, nursing staff on the frontline are finding new and better ways to deliver patient care.

As one nurse recently wrote to us:

"Without a working knowledge of clinical care provision how can ideas be practical and ensure quality of care is maintained? Nurses are in a prime position to look at care provision to identify better ways of working and therefore identify cost savings without sacrificing patient care and experience."

As part of our Frontline First campaign, the RCN is collecting examples of cost-saving innovations at NHS services across the UK. What nursing solutions have you seen in your workplace that could achieve savings without sacrificing patient care?

http://generalelection.rcn.org.uk/innovation

There are two ways the NHS can find billions of pounds in efficiencies:

discover innovative ways to save money
or
make cuts to staff and services

Every day, UK nurses are helping to devise and implement cost-effective solutions saving their employers money and helping to protect jobs. We've already heard from dozens of nursing staff who told us about innovations in their workplace, from changes to day-to-day practices to
whole new ways of working.

Please take a moment to report any cost-saving innovations you've seen at the workplace:

http://generalelection.rcn.org.uk/innovation

Thanks for speaking up and helping to protect patient care.

Yours sincerely,

Janet Davies
Director of Nursing and Service Delivery

My source:
Subject: Improving patient care
From: "Janet Davies, Royal College of Nursing"
Date: 04 August 2010 16:53:30

College of Social Work

At the moment there is an ongoing consultation relating to the creation of a College of Social Work. Here is an explanation from the website - http://www.collegeofsocialwork.org.uk/

Welcome to the home of the campaign for an independent, professionally led national college of social work across the UK. This website is dedicated to supporting the development of a fully independent national College of Social Work which will seek to improve and support social work by providing leadership by and for the profession.

The College of Social Work will lead the development of the profession and represent it in discussions with organisations that regulate, train, work with, and are affected by social work.

For further information on BASW or the campaign for the national college of social work, please visit http://www.basw.co.uk for the latest news, information and updates.

Take part in discussions online in BASW's member-only forum at MyBASW Exchange

If you would like to get in touch with your local BASW office, please find our contact details at http://www.basw.co.uk/contact

For several decades social workers have been my colleagues on the ground floor, doing the 9-5 turn and more. I once started a talk to a local constabulary on service development and thought the reception was a bit odd: the introduction met with a frosty tone in high summer. Things settled when I revealed I was a nurse, not a social worker. The audience highlighted the need - this was well over a decade ago - for more effective out-of-hours access to social work and mental health service colleagues. Things have improved markedly and with ongoing re-organisation pressures on the NHS and social services, the need for radical change has now shifted to social work itself.

I do hope the new College of Social Work will consider the health career model as a potential foundational and lifelong learning resource. The qualities and relevance of the model to the social work profession are manifold, and include the model's being:

• person-centred -
• the model is also socially oriented (25% of the model concerns the 'social' agenda);
• recognizes the oppositional experience of person - state / law;
• can support reflective models of practice for new learners and established staff;
  
• the vulnerable can be represented there - infants, adults, older adults ...;
• multidisciplinary in scope, or phrased another way - discipline neutral;
• multi-contextual in scope, individual (self), group (family, community), service (resources, policy), budgets (financial), recovery, strengths, information-education, quality and outcomes (reporting);
• a currency to support interprofessional education and training, and -
  
• prior to the above provides a tool for curriculum development.
  

Best wishes to our social work colleagues as they set out on their own journey, which can also provide a vehicle for sharing.

The cost of anholistic care

Being 'holistic' in care delivery can seem anachronistic, paying homage to new age thinking and practices. Paradoxically, being holistic in nursing can also mimic an admin exercise that amounts to ticking the boxes. So for Hodges' model - have you visited all the care domains?

• INTERPERSONAL care ✓
• POLITICAL care ✓
• PHYSICAL care ✓
• SOCIAL care ✓

Advanced discharge planning is many things:

• idealised care;
• standardised care;
  
• evidence of policy, targets;
• sign posting for the care pathway;
• an essential care aspiration that emphasizes the individual's strengths and resources.

As Wimbledon once again reaches its climax we observe that a fast serve needs to be prepared for a fast return of serve.

Last month 23 June, 2010 The Guardian, Society Guardian featured The high cost of return:

Hospitals could lose up to £1.5bn of NHS funding a year because of the government's decision to penalise those where patients return within 30 days of being treated. That is the conclusion of research conducted by health analysts Dr Foster into the potential impact of the tough new policy. It warns that NHS trusts face large potential losses, the biggest could reach £28.7m, as a result of the new approach. In all, 146 acute, specialist and mental health trusts could lose out. Denis Campbell, p.3.

Apparently -

Andrew Lansley wants to force the NHS to provide better care in hospitals and mental health establishments, to keep treating patients there until they are fit to leave and to work more closely with community-based healthcare professionals, such as GPs and district nurses, to ensure sick people receive more help with their convalescence after discharge and so are less likely to return to hospital. "Making hospitals responsible for a patient's ongoing care after discharge will create more joined-up working between hospitals and community services and may be supported by the developments in re-ablement and post-discharge support," he says.

I hope in reading the above you have a sense of my frustration in that the health career model can encourage and support timely reflection that can help achieve holistic, integrated - coherent care.

If the model was shared
- a common resource -
across disciplines and available to patients and carers
then the potential benefits (and savings?) are even greater.

Drupal musings 5: Jump start for a new blog / site

Last month I had a great offer from the Drupal North West UK user group members at Manchester's - MadLab.

The proposal is using a central Manchester venue with wifi for a day engage some volunteers and create a new version of this blog in Drupal. This has woken me up! Putting a request out MDDA - Manchester Digital Development Agency have kindly offered to help out in terms of the venue.

At this months meeting I explained where things are up to and it was clear I still had some sorting to do.

As Chris and the others asked: What can Drupal do that Blogger cannot deliver?

Recently Blogger have extended their template design and functionality. So, now I should be able to find a new (and clean) template and re-introduce comments. In 2006 when I started the blog there were problems with spam.

So... it looks best to leave the blog as a going concern and focus on a new site for Hodges' model and the specific content and functionality requirements there.

I have my ticket for Drupalcon Copenhagen, for me this is 3rd time lucky, last chance saloon. This would be great timing and with the darkening nights too. ...

A phantom outline (currently an example of the 'living-dead') has been known for a while:

• Archive
  
• Case Studies (content types)
  
• Glossary
• Introduction - beginners guide to the health career model
  
• ...
  

If in one day a group of Drupalers can help me jump start this project that would be - awesome! First though I have to get an idea of numbers and a poll to gauge which day is the best for people - looking ahead to October - November. Before then I have some work to do...

Clinical Informatics in the North West – the start of a new era!

This meeting is free and open to all, but please notify your intention to attend to: phil.paterson at bcs.org.uk
Please forward this email to colleagues who may be interested ...
============================================

Thursday, 1st July 2010, 6.15pm light buffet, 7pm talk
Clinical Informatics in the North West – the start of a new era!
Speakers: Dr Andrew Coley, Dr Asad Sadiq, Mr Bibhas Roy, Dr Sydney Schneidman, Dr Rhidian Bramley, Dr Amir Hannan
Organiser: BCS Health Northern
Venue: Manchester Conference Centre, Sackville Street, M1 3BB
Directions: www.manchesterconferencecentre.co.uk/location/

HICAT - a new approach by NHS Northwest – is this the start of a new era for Clinical Informatics in the region?

The HICAT are the Health Informatics Clinical Advisory Team at NHS North-West:

• Dr Andrew Coley is the Senior Clinical Officer.
• Dr Asad Sadiq is a consultant psychiatrist and Mental Health IT lead.
• Mr Bibhas Roy is an orthopaedic surgeon and Secondary Care IT lead.
• Dr Schneidman is an A&E consultant and Lorenzo clinical IT lead.
• Dr Bramley is a consultant radiologist and Diagnostics IT lead.
• Dr Hannan is a GP and the Primary Care IT lead.

We will describe the HICAT Mission Statement and the principles used to help deliver the next generation healthcare using IT to help deliver care. We will describe what we are doing for Clinical Informatics across the board in the North West and what impact we expect from the initiatives and efforts to have on clinical practice in the region, both short term and long. We will explain how our work will benefit patients. The speakers will be happy to discuss our plans and expectations with a knowledgeable audience and to take note of helpful feedback.

This talk should appeal to all with an interest in the use of Informatics by clinicians and the impact that can have on the quality and safety of patient care and the efficiency of services provided through the NHS.

Everyone welcome to attend this FREE event
but please notify your intention to attend to
phil.paterson at bcs.org.uk

If you have any queries on anything BCS related then please do not hesitate to contact me. Also, if you know of any IT events that would be of interest to fellow members, then please let me know.

Regards,
Andrew Mohan,
Chairman,
BCS Manchester Branch.
Andrew_Mohan at bcs.org.uk

www.bcsmanchester.org.uk
The Branch's website has details on all of its events and links to the other BCS groups that operate in the Greater Manchester area.

http://twitter.com/bcsmanchester

Call for Proposals to Phase 3 Lifelong Health and Wellbeing (LLHW)

Last month I posted the advanced notice about this call for proposals, which is now fully released and has been publicised on the SPARC / KT-EQUAL network:

Dear All (but especially researchers who are desperate to secure research funding)

The Call for Proposals to Phase 3 of the cross-research council multi-health agency Lifelong Health and Wellbeing (LLHW) initiative was released today.

Details can be found at:

http://www.mrc.ac.uk/Fundingopportunities/Calls/LLHWPhase3/MRC006680

This is a very significant opportunity, well worth close scrutiny and consideration and, hopefully, subsequent action.

If you have any uncertainties about the programme or its requirements then I am sure that the representatives of the research councils will be very pleased for you to make contact with them.

Importantly this is a call for multidisciplinary research, a requirement which must be wholeheartedly embraced for any proposal to stand a chance of being eligible for consideration.

It's time for action!!

Best wishes

Peter Lansley
Professor Peter Lansley, BSc, MSc, PhD, MCIOB, FCOT
Director, KT-EQUAL – Knowledge Transfer for Extending Quality Life
School of Construction Management and Engineering, URS Building,
University of Reading, Whiteknights, PO Box 219, Reading, RG6 6AW, UK
p.r.lansley at reading.ac.uk
http://www.sparc.ac.uk

Update - King's College London mental health SIG 17 May

With the title of my talk sorted here is the programme for the Mental Health SIG meeting:

Health Sciences and Practice Subject Centre
Room: 1.17 Franklin Wilkins Building (1st floor)
Franklin-Wilkins buildings, King's College London,
150 Stamford Street, London SE1 9NH

Monday 17th May
10- 4pm
King’s College London, Waterloo

Programme

10:00 Arrivals and Refreshments

10.30 Welcome and introductions
Bill Penson
Teacher Fellow/Senior lecturer in Mental Health,
Faculty of Health, Leeds Metropolitan University

11.00 ‘The Darzi Dementia care pathway- competencies’
Professor Paul Kingston
Faculty Director for Research and Scholarship
Staffordshire University

12.00 Lunch and Networking

13.00 ‘Hodges' model: a conceptual framework’
Peter Jones
Community Mental Health Nurse NHS,
Independent Scholar & Informatics Specialist

1400 Refreshments

14.30 ‘e-PsychNurse’ an EU funded project
Professor Mary Chambers
Director of Nursing
South West London and St George’s Mental Health NHS Trust

15.30 Future meetings and summing up
Bill Penson

16.00 Close

I can expand on my plans - broadly three 20 minute sections:

• Re-introduce the model, history, background;
• Explain h2cm's relevance, scope and applications - possibly with a brief exercise;
  
• Discuss publications to date, future publication plans to include the website and use of Drupal, with time for questions.
  

Presentation: King's College London 17 May Mental Health SIG

Can you join us at the Higher Education Academy Health Sciences & Practice Subject Centre - Mental Health SIG in London
17th May 1000 - 1600?

I am really looking forward to presenting at the Mental Health Special Interest Group next month. It looks a great prospect as I have an hour on the programme. The draft title does not really represent what I intend, paradoxically I will re-introduce Hodges' model and explain why the model is so relevant in theory and practice.

I will outline my presentation here in a future post and the programme overall. For my sins I am now also a sign-off nursing mentor, so being able to network is another great plus. More to follow ....

Here are some details about the SIG from their website:

Welcome

To date, there has been no UK wide, cross disciplinary special interest group providing a regular opportunity for educators to meet face to face - with a view to exploring common issues and challenges, sharing resources and influencing policy and practice in the field of mental health. Arguably, this has hampered educators’ capacity to shape and respond to new developments.

In February 2005 the ‘Common Ground’ event organised by the Mental Health in Higher Education project in partnership with the Health Sciences and Practice subject centre met to identify key issues facing mental health educators in nursing and the Allied Health Professions. Subsequently, the special interest group has broadened out to encompass all colleagues with an interest in sharing approaches and engaging in debate about educational practice and the implications of policy developments for learning and teaching about mental health.

Who is the Mental Health SIG for?

Anyone involved in higher education with an interest in mental health.

We are keen to bring together people from across all disciplines and perspectives (including lecturers, practice educators and user educators and carers with involvement in education) – those who are mental health specialists and those for whom mental health may be one aspect of a broader subject area.

Health Sciences and Practice Subject Centre
Room: 1.17 Franklin Wilkins Building (1st floor)
Franklin-Wilkins buildings,
King's College London,
150 Stamford Street,
London SE1 9NH

A call for applications for the 3rd phase of Lifelong Health and Wellbeing (LLHW)

Advanced Notice

A call for applications for the third phase of Lifelong Health and Wellbeing (LLHW) will be announced in early May 2010.

Lifelong Health and Wellbeing is a major cross-council initiative involving AHRC, BBSRC, EPSRC, ESRC and MRC in partnership with the UK health departments. LLHW supports multi-disciplinary research addressing factors across the life course that influence healthy ageing and wellbeing in later life.

The initiative aims to lead to improvements in health and quality of life in later life, inform policy and practice and increase capacity building in ageing related research.

Phase 3 will invite high-quality innovative multidisciplinary applications that focus on major ageing-related challenges faced by the UK in the 21^st century. Proposals will be welcome from multidisciplinary teams in the areas of, but not restricted to the following:

• Mental Health and Wellbeing including quality of life, preserving cognitive function and exploiting mental capital
• Resilience for successful ageing: from cell to society including life course influences, markers for ageing and processes of ageing
• Age-related conditions, including frailty and interventions to promote independence in later life.

Structure of the call
Funds will be available through two modes of support:

LLHW Research Grants - up to £10m will be available for multi-disciplinary research awards from £300k up to £2.5m over three to five years.

LLHW Pilot Studies - a total of £2.5m to fund up to 10 pilot or feasibility studies for a maximum of two years, aimed at informing the development of future cross-disciplinary research proposals.

Selection Criteria
Successful proposals will be of strategic importance, be truly multi-disciplinary, encompassing the remits of more than one Research Council, and have clearly articulated and robust methodology and design.

Further information
Updates and further information about phase 3 can be found on the website:
http://www.mrc.ac.uk/LLHW or by emailing llhw AT headoffice.mrc.ac.uk

My source:
Charlotte Jones
NDA Programme Secretary
The University of Sheffield
Department of Sociological Studies
Elmfield, Northumberland Road
Sheffield, S10 2TU, UK

http://www.newdynamics.group.shef.ac.uk