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Study shows evidence of some good practice, but mental health services for over 65s need “urgent attention”

People over 65 are often denied access to the full range of mental health services available to younger adults, according a Healthcare Commission report published recently.

In its study of services for older people at six specialist mental health trusts (about 10% of the total number), the Commission found some evidence of high quality care where there was good integration of health and social services. It also found good support and training for carers at some trusts.

However, the study showed older people were often unable to access the full range of services, including: out of hours services; crisis services; psychological therapies; drug and alcohol misuse services. The Commission is also concerned that there is limited national data available on the quality of specialist older people’s mental health services, which would allow performance in key areas to be analysed more fully.

The Commission met with over 600 people at six mental health trusts including: chief executives; senior managers; ward staff; service users; carers; social workers and commissioners. It held interviews and workshops with people at each trust to build a picture of what was working well and what needed to improve in mental health services.

Findings show that older people were often prevented from accessing care because of stretched services or a lack of age-appropriate care. Some staff said patient groups considered to be of high risk to the public or where government targets were applicable were often prioritised, leaving older people’s services lagging behind with little funding.

The Commission recommends the government should steer the strategic direction for mental health services towards making sure older people’s rights are upheld by having equal access to services and are not discriminated against. The Commission believes the Department of Health’s ‘new horizons’ project, which will implement a new framework for the delivery of mental health services in 2010, would be a good vehicle for this.

It is also calling for the Royal College of Psychiatrists and other relevant organisations to develop models of care based on assessment of need rather than the age of a person.

Anna Walker, the Commission’s chief executive, said: “Improving mental health services for older people is an important priority for the NHS, which the government has already recognised.

“This study has revealed some areas of good practice. Where health and social services are working well together we found high quality care and a wide range of services available to older people. At some trusts, carers told us that they had good support and training to help them cope with their loved one’s illness. This is to be welcomed.

“But trusts are not always providing appropriate mental health services to the over 65s. It is truly unacceptable that out of hours and crisis services were often not available to older people. There needs to be a fundamental shift towards providing care based on a person’s clinical need rather than their age.

“Considering a quarter of admissions to mental health inpatient services are over 65, this issue needs urgent attention.”

With the number of people over 65 set to increase by 15% by 2019 and the number of people with dementia to rise to one million by 2025, it is important that services for this group of people is fully accessible and robust enough to cope.

The Commission’s study covered four themes: age discrimination in mental health services; quality of inpatient care; how comprehensive services are; how organisations work together to provide services. It found that:

Most trusts had made some progress in identifying issues of age discrimination, but at some trusts older people were still denied access to the full range of mental health services available to younger adults.

· Two trusts made an effort to deliver services based on need rather than age, with anti-discriminatory policies embedded throughout the organisations. Staff showed pride in services and felt strongly that their services were seen as being equal to others.

· Four trusts had made progress in identifying issues of age discrimination and taken some action towards making their services accessible on the basis of need. Three of the four had a transition procedure in place for patients transferring between services for people under 65 to those for the over 65s, respecting need rather than age in deciding when patients should be transferred.

· But out of hours and crisis services were often not open to older people and only took referrals for people under 65 or for conditions other than dementia. There appeared to be a reluctance to refer and a reluctance to accept referrals, due to workload and the age-appropriateness of the service offered. There was no clear justification for this.

· Staff at several trusts said some older people had difficulties in gaining access to services for alcohol and substance misuse. Even when services were available they were either not offered in an age-appropriate way or were not available when staff attempted to refer to them. Many were geared towards younger people, usually males, and were felt not to be appropriate for older people who may feel vulnerable in the atmosphere.

· Provision of psychological therapies for older people was poor in most of the trusts visited. One trust reported that in an audit of 1,300 referrals to psychological therapies from GPs, only 49 were for people over 65, revealing a lack of awareness among GPs of the older age group’s need. One trust also reported a waiting list of six months for an assessment.

Integration of health and social care services is patchy, which impacts on the quality, range and availability of services for patients and their carers.

· Where health and social care services were integrated at both team level and management level, it was more likely that services offered a higher standard of care and a greater range of services. This means the people who use services and their carers could access the help they need and were more satisfied with their care. Carers in less integrated services said they could often spend a large amount of time and energy trying to find out who they needed to go to for what problem.

· Some commissioners struggled with the boundary that separates the over and under 65s in mental health services and were unsure about the different models of service required. The Commission urges services to focus on assessing people according to need rather than age in order to provide the most appropriate services for the individual.

There is evidence of high quality inpatient care and of service users and carers being involved in developing services, but there is room for improvement at some trusts.

· Service users and carers were particularly positive about the support groups available for carers and training courses for them to learn about their loved one’s illness. They said services were better at involving them in decisions about their own care, but there are still lessons to be learned to make sure patients are consulted when planning services and that they are given basic information about how they can access them in an emergency and for routine help. Some people said they felt they were sometimes pushed ‘from pillar to post’ when attempting to contact someone.

· In trusts where the Commission found evidence of high quality care, there was a sense of strong clinical and managerial leadership. These trusts tended to have old age psychiatrists with managerial roles at senior levels who were able to provide leadership and bring issues relating to the care of older people directly to the trust’s board. In the trusts with divided or joint clinical leadership there appeared to be a lack of robust progress in service improvements.


Carers were concerned about the closure of some services and the care relatives received on general wards in acute hospitals.

· Interviews with groups of carers raised concerns about local closures of day hospitals or inpatient units. Some trusts did not provide day services at all and the alternatives to this were not apparent.

· Carers said some staff in general wards at acute hospitals were not being trained or were not equipped to deal with patients with mental health problems, especially dementia.


In its report the Commission makes 14 recommendations to the government, the Care Quality Commission, trusts and service providers to ensure there is a coordinated approach to improve mental health services for older people.


The Commission is very concerned that nationally available data does not provide a robust basis on which to compare the performance of different areas in meeting older people’s mental health needs, or to allow the boards of trusts to assure themselves about the extent to which they are providing good quality non-discriminatory care. Where data was found to be reliable, it did not shed light on the most important themes identified for the study. The Commission recommends the government, the Information Centre for Health and Social Care and regulatory bodies should review the quality and focus of national data sets, to enable more effective monitoring and evaluation of these services.