Expert opinions on community services for people with intellectual disabilities and mental health problems

Abstract

Purpose

There has been limited evidence on which to base services in the community for people who have intellectual disabilities and coexisting mental health problems. Recent research involving service users, carers and professionals has identified a number of key service components that community services should provide. More detail is needed to explore how best these components could be implemented and delivered. This paper aims to discuss these issues.

Design/methodology/approach

A total of 14 multidisciplinary professionals from specialist intellectual disabilities services in the UK were interviewed about their opinions on four key areas of community service provision. These included the review and monitoring of service users, their access to social, leisure and occupational activities, the support, advice and training around mental health for a person's family or carers and “out of hours” and crisis responses. The interview data was used for coding using the NVivo 7 software package and then analyzed using thematic analysis.

Findings

Analysis of participants' views on these key essential service components produced wider themes of importance. The ten major emergent themes for services were: their configuration/structure, their clarity of purpose/care pathways, their joint working, their training, their flexibility, their resources, their evidence‐base, being holistic/multidisciplinary, being needs‐led/personalised and providing accessible information.

Originality/value

These views of experts can help inform further research for the development and the evaluation of services.

Citation

Hemmings, C. and Al‐Sheikh, A. (2013), "Expert opinions on community services for people with intellectual disabilities and mental health problems", Advances in Mental Health and Intellectual Disabilities, Vol. 7 No. 3, pp. 169-174. https://doi.org/10.1108/20441281311320756