Early Intervention in Psychosis Summary Report 

Recommendations

1. All NHS boards should establish early intervention in psychosis services which enable reliable delivery of the evidence-based interventions and minimise the duration of untreated psychosis.

Engagement

2. NHS boards, local authorities, IJBs, HSCPs and third sector should collaborate to develop and implement a shared vision for ensuring effective responses for individuals experiencing psychosis. This should include:

  • establishing local multi-professional groups to lead the work
  • reflecting the vision in local strategies and plans, including regional delivery plans, and
  • working across boundaries of primary and secondary, children and adults, and statutory and voluntary.

3. EIP services should be developed and implemented with a focus on engagement and co-design with experts, including people with lived experience. This needs to include:

  • developing local lived experience reference groups
  • maintaining the national EIP lived experience reference group and advisory group, and
  • identifying local clinical leadership.

4. HIS should facilitate a national learning system for EIP, including:

  • offering opportunities to network and share innovative practice whilst boosting the resilience and skills of staff and other stakeholders to lead change, and
  • establishing regional networks in the north, east and west of Scotland in line with existing regional planning arrangements.

Resources

5. There is a need to identify additional recurring, ring-fenced funding for EIP.

6. The Scottish Government and NHS Education for Scotland should support the establishment and delivery of a workforce development programme which ensures that there are enough appropriately trained staff to support service development:

  • develop a knowledge and skills framework for EIP
  • develop Essentials of EIP training for all staff to introduce values, knowledge, and skills needed to deliver EIP
  • increase availability of training and supervision for staff delivering EIP, for example BFT, CBTp, PSIp, MAP health behaviour change, and
  • deliver training for wider stakeholders, for example, police and education staff, who encounter people with first episode psychosis.

Service design

7. HIS should support the routine evaluation of the effectiveness of services by:

  • developing and testing quality indicators, and
  • rolling out agreed quality indicators nationally, in partnership with Public Health Scotland.

8. HIS should identify and support pathfinder sites to test hub and spoke and bespoke service models in order to understand how they may be used to deliver quality EIP services in Scotland.

9. Local health improvement teams should develop and implement awareness campaigns to provide information on the early signs of psychosis, and where possible a national approach should be taken.

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