Evaluation of Wessex locally-based hospital units for severely and profoundly mentally handicapped people
Evaluation of Wessex locally-based hospital units for severely and profoundly mentally handicapped people
Following a survey to establish the prevalence of mental handicap, Wessex Regional Hospital Board provided some additional residential places for severely and profoundly mentally handicapped people in small locally-based hospital units. Four such units for children and one for adults were evaluated for their comparative effectiveness against existing large mental handicap hospital services in order to test the feasibility of developing the locally-based pattern of provision. Each Wessex locally-based hospital unit served mentally handicapped clients from a defined catchment area, including the most severely and profoundly handicapped. Their representativeness of such people in hospitals in England and Wales was established. Control groups of clients in existing large hospitals were identified with similar or slightly lesser degrees of handicap. A series of research measures were defined to compare the quality of client outcome and the administrative feasibility of the alternative service options. To evaluate the former, the level of client activity, the frequency of client contact with their family, client morbidity and staff behaviour were measured to complement the assessment of client progress undertaken by colleagues. Measures of staffing level, staff continuity, the frequency of contact clients received from professional staff, capital and revenue costs were used to investigate administrative feasibility. The results on virtually all measures showed that standards in the locally-based hospital units were equal to or greater than those in the large hospitals. It was therefore possible to reach a fairly certain conclusion that the locally-based hospital option was feasible.
University of Southampton
1982
Felce, D
(1982)
Evaluation of Wessex locally-based hospital units for severely and profoundly mentally handicapped people.
University of Southampton, Doctoral Thesis.
Record type:
Thesis
(Doctoral)
Abstract
Following a survey to establish the prevalence of mental handicap, Wessex Regional Hospital Board provided some additional residential places for severely and profoundly mentally handicapped people in small locally-based hospital units. Four such units for children and one for adults were evaluated for their comparative effectiveness against existing large mental handicap hospital services in order to test the feasibility of developing the locally-based pattern of provision. Each Wessex locally-based hospital unit served mentally handicapped clients from a defined catchment area, including the most severely and profoundly handicapped. Their representativeness of such people in hospitals in England and Wales was established. Control groups of clients in existing large hospitals were identified with similar or slightly lesser degrees of handicap. A series of research measures were defined to compare the quality of client outcome and the administrative feasibility of the alternative service options. To evaluate the former, the level of client activity, the frequency of client contact with their family, client morbidity and staff behaviour were measured to complement the assessment of client progress undertaken by colleagues. Measures of staffing level, staff continuity, the frequency of contact clients received from professional staff, capital and revenue costs were used to investigate administrative feasibility. The results on virtually all measures showed that standards in the locally-based hospital units were equal to or greater than those in the large hospitals. It was therefore possible to reach a fairly certain conclusion that the locally-based hospital option was feasible.
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Published date: 1982
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Local EPrints ID: 460048
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/460048
PURE UUID: b0fdc238-8b4f-4fda-a178-61a772c18f04
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Date deposited: 04 Jul 2022 17:44
Last modified: 04 Jul 2022 17:44
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Author:
D Felce
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