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The Gloucester assertive community treatment team: A description and comparison with other services

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 June 2014

Nathan Gregory  and
Rob Macpherson
Nathan Gregory
Affiliation:
Gloucester Assertive Community Treatment Team, Gloucestershire Partnership NHS Trust, Burleigh House, Nettleton Road, Gloucester GL1 0JH
Rob Macpherson
Affiliation:
Specialist Services, Gloucestershire Partnership NHS Trust, Gloucester GL1 0JH, England
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Abstract

Assertive Community Treatment (ACT) has developed globally as a model of community care for the severely mentally ill. However, in the United Kingdom there is mixed evidence regarding improvements in outcome and concerns about ACT teams having poor fidelity to the original ACT model.

Objective: This study presents the fidelity characteristics of an established ACT team serving Gloucester City. It describes service user demographic and illness data and compares these findings to other important studies in the United Kingdom.

Method: The Dartmouth Assertive Community Treatment Scale was applied to rate the Gloucester ACT team's fidelity characteristics. The Gloucester Caseload Project Demographic Pro-Forma was collected from all of the team's 79 service users.

Results: The population of severely mentally ill ACT service users in Gloucester City were an older and more “disabled” group compared to the classic ACT studies. Furthermore, although findings indicate a high level of fidelity to the original ACT model, the team it is still associated with high levels of inpatient treatment.

Conclusion: High fidelity ACT services appear to be associated with high admission rates. Therefore teams should not be viewed as alternatives to hospital admission but have goals of improving engagement and social functioning. Furthermore, findings have allowed the team to benchmark its service and target areas for further service development. More consistent reporting of fidelity data on ACT research would facilitate comparison across different services.

Type
Original Papers
Information
Irish Journal of Psychological Medicine , Volume 23 , Issue 4 , December 2006 , pp. 134 - 139
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2006

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