Title: Access Assessments for Admission to Adult Medium and Low Secure Services
Funder: Department of Health and Social Care

Abstract: Aim The aim of the research is to better understand assessments of people who are referred to secure psychiatric services. Background Secure services care for and treat people with severe mental health problems who are at serious risk to others. People can be referred to these services from prison, court, other inpatient services and the community. Before being accepted for these services, each patient undergoes an assessment to enable decisions to be made about about if they need to be admitted and if so what care, treatment and level of security they need. This is known as an access assessment . At the moment we do not know whether these assessments are being managed in the same way across each service in England and Wales. We also don t know what the experience of the assessment process is like for; 1) patients who are assessed, 2) clinicians who make referrals to the service, and 3) clinicians who do the assessments. We want to conduct research that looks at the access assessment process in detail. We hope that the findings from this research will help clinicians to make better decisions about people who are assessed for admission to secure services. Methods Our research will be conducted in three steps: Step 1: We will look at all the previous research in this area to see what guidance there is for this type of assessment. Step 2: We will ask Access Assessment services to provide us with details about who has been referred to their services, who was assessed as needing to be admitted to secure services, and who went on to be admitted. Step 3: We will conduct interviews with patients who have been referred to an access assessment service, clinicians who have made referrals to Access Assessment services and clinicians who have conducted the assessments to find out about their experiences. Patient and public involvement A member of our research team has experience of being treated in secure services. With support from the rest of the team, they will work with other people who have experienced being assessed for secure services, to help to decide how the study will be done and how the findings will be shared. Dissemination We plan to share our findings in a report to the funder, as a lay summary for the general public and also in academic journals which are read by clinicians who conduct these types of assessments.

Lay abstract: Aim The aim of the research is to better understand assessments of people who are referred to secure psychiatric services. Background Secure services care for and treat people with severe mental health problems who are at serious risk to others. People can be referred to these services from prison, court, other inpatient services and the community. Before being accepted for these services, each patient undergoes an assessment to enable decisions to be made about about if they need to be admitted and if so what care, treatment and level of security they need. This is known as an access assessment . At the moment we do not know whether these assessments are being managed in the same way across each service in England and Wales. We also don t know what the experience of the assessment process is like for; 1) patients who are assessed, 2) clinicians who make referrals to the service, and 3) clinicians who do the assessments. We want to conduct research that looks at the access assessment process in detail. We hope that the findings from this research will help clinicians to make better decisions about people who are assessed for admission to secure services. Methods Our research will be conducted in three steps: Step 1: We will look at all the previous research in this area to see what guidance there is for this type of assessment. Step 2: We will ask Access Assessment services to provide us with details about who has been referred to their services, who was assessed as needing to be admitted to secure services, and who went on to be admitted. Step 3: We will conduct interviews with patients who have been referred to an access assessment service, clinicians who have made referrals to Access Assessment services and clinicians who have conducted the assessments to find out about their experiences. Patient and public involvement A member of our research team has experience of being treated in secure services. With support from the rest of the team, they will work with other people who have experienced being assessed for secure services, to help to decide how the study will be done and how the findings will be shared. Dissemination We plan to share our findings in a report to the funder, as a lay summary for the general public and also in academic journals which are read by clinicians who conduct these types of assessments.

Research activity codes: 8.1 ORGANISATION AND DELIVERY OF SERVICES
Health categories: MENTAL HEALTH