People often have complex personal needs. For example: intense social isolation, vulnerability, trauma, and severe depression.
This means community signposting services sometimes get inappropriate referrals from Adult Social Care & their staff haven’t got the skills to support people with mental health problems beyond the service’s remit.
Staff find it difficult to fully support people’s complex needs.
“We’re working with people with mental health needs, and it should be low to moderate mental health. But what we are finding increasingly is because there’s long waiting lists for counselling, it’s hard to get into secondary mental health services. We’re finding that people are coming to social prescribing as a holding [area], so that is something we are having to be very careful of and making sure that we don’t become mental health practitioners because that’s not our role, we’re not trained in mental health“
Signposter
Staff working with Adult Social Care sometimes get inappropriate referrals that are difficult for them to support.
“Sometimes we get really inappropriate referrals where the person needs social care or more intense support than what they could receive from us, but we try and refer them on to the right people. I’d do like a care-line phone call with them and try and get them the support.“
Signposter
Staff are not equipped to support people with significant and/or undiagnosed mental health problems in their community signposting service.
“we’re trying to balance and manage some very unwell people that probably aren’t suitable for social prescribing. What they need is psychology services, but they just do not have capacity or that person doesn’t meet the criteria, so therefore will not be supported and then you’ve got to try and find them other things that are probably only just going to stick a plaster on the issue… I’m just sticking a plaster on a problem, not actually helping to resolve one.“
Signposter
What to consider
Staff try to support referrals for people with complex needs, but their service is not equipped to handle this.
Inappropriate referrals can create barriers for services to effectively provide personalised support.
Consider the following strategies for sustaining your service:
Finding ways to include people with complex needs in the service (-)
What to do:
Build supportive relationships with service users & offer inclusive activities to them.
How to do it:
Encourage open discussion about service users’ needs to empower them to engage in managing their health & well-being.
What changes:
- Service meets people’s needs
- Service delivered as intended
- Service user-focused
Receiving referrals for needs (e.g. Adult Social Care) that can’t be met by the service (-)
What to do:
Make sure linked providers understand what the service offers.
Regularly communicate with Adult Social Care & crisis support providers about the service, its scope & capacity.
How to do it:
Reiterate service scope to referrers & clearly explain who is able to access the service, its limits & resources.
Improve linked providers’ understanding of how to make service referrals.
What changes:
- Service meets people’s needs
- Shorter waits for service
- Fits wider setting
Providers try to support people with significant mental health problems (+)
What to do:
Signposters need to recognise the limitations of what the service can offer.
How to do it:
Staff are trained to recognise when people can’t be safely supported.
What changes:
- Service delivered as intended
- Service user-focused