Integrating mental health services for adults

The European Commission is supporting Denmark in addressing the urgent need to improve care coordination for the mental health sector so that it can provide community-based interventions involving professionals from the region and municipalities, and from the health and the social care sector.

Context

Both the deinstitutionalization process, and reforms shifting care responsibilities to municipalities, have shaped the current structure of mental health services in Denmark. As a result of these processes, municipalities are responsible for specialised housing facilities and social support of people with mental health problems, including rehabilitation, education, and employment (often addressed as social psychiatric care). Regional authorities are responsible for psychiatric hospitals and specialised outpatient mental health treatment. These sharing and division of responsibilities over care provision between different regional and local governments, and the lack of performant tools to facilitate the coordination of activities hinders the organisation and provision of well-articulated community-based interventions in Denmark. 

Support delivered

The expertise provided helped The Central Region of Denmark and three municipalities (Skive, Silkeborg and Viborg) to develop a care model that could provide tailored and flexible citizen-centred solutions in mental health in a harmonized but decentralized manner. In particular, the authorities learned about and implemented cross-sectorial collaboration and tailored the Flexible Assertive Community Treatment (FACT) framework to deliver mental health interventions.

Results achieved

Overall, the results of this project helped improve care coordination between regional and municipal actors. A step-by-step implementation of a cross sectoral FACT-team, in collaboration between regional and municipal actors, starting with a handful of clients, led to developing a new care model; i.e. the Client-Centered Coordination Platform (3Cp). This new care model strengthened professional multi-agency collaboration to enhance recovery, quality of life, participation, and inclusion for people with complex mental health and related problems on the level of a professional network of support. The authorities will continue to implement 3Cp and are moving towards implementing FACT-teams.