The Ten Essential Shared Capabilities A Framework for the Whole of the Mental Health Workforce

http://www.dh.gov.uk/prod_consum_dh/groups/dh_digitalassets/@dh/@en/documents/digitalasset/dh_4087170.pdf

 

The Ten Essential Shared Capabilities for Mental Health Practice 

 

Working in Partnership. Developing and maintaining constructive working relationships with service 

users, carers, families, colleagues, lay people and wider community networks. Working positively with 

any tensions created by conflicts of interest or aspiration that may arise between the partners in care. 

 

Respecting Diversity. Working in partnership with service users, carers, families and colleagues to

provide care and interventions that not only make a positive difference but also do so in ways that

respect and value diversity including age, race, culture, disability, gender, spirituality and sexuality.

 

Practising Ethically. Recognising the rights and aspirations of service users and their families,

acknowledging power differentials and minimising them whenever possible. Providing treatment and

care that is accountable to service users and carers within the boundaries prescribed by national

(professional), legal and local codes of ethical practice.

 

Challenging Inequality. Addressing the causes and consequences of stigma, discrimination, social 

inequality and exclusion on service users, carers and mental health services. Creating, developing or 

maintaining valued social roles for people in the communities they come from. 

 

Promoting Recovery. Working in partnership to provide care and treatment that enables service users 

and carers to tackle mental health problems with hope and optimism and to work towards a valued life­

style within and beyond the limits of any mental health problem. 

 

Identifying People’s Needs and Strengths. Working in partnership to gather information to agree

health and social care needs in the context of the preferred lifestyle and aspirations of service users

their families, carers and friends.

 

Providing Service User Centred Care. Negotiating achievable and meaningful goals; primarily from 

the perspective of service users and their families. Influencing and seeking the means to achieve these 

goals and clarifying the responsibilities of the people who will provide any help that is needed, including 

systematically evaluating outcomes and achievements. 

 

Making a Difference. Facilitating access to and delivering the best quality, evidence-based, valuesbased health and social care interventions to meet the needs and aspirations of service users and their families and carers. 

Promoting Safety and Positive Risk Taking. Empowering the person to decide the level of risk they 

are prepared to take with their health and safety. This includes working with the tension between 

promoting safety and positive risk taking, including assessing and dealing with possible risks for service users, carers, family members, and the wider public. 

 

Personal Development and Learning. Keeping up-to-date with changes in practice and participating 

in life-long learning, personal and professional development for one’s self and colleagues through 

supervision, appraisal and reflective practice.