A caseload management tool for community mental health teams

What is it about?

A caseload management tool was developed with the aim of creating a straightforward, unbiased way of assessing a clinician's caseload for the Community Mental Health Teams in Aneurin Bevan University Health Board. For the first time, the tool developed allows for individual clinicians to record caseloads electronically, enabling decisions makers to assess caseloads over time and for the team as a whole. The newly developed tool also has the capability to assess a client's individual weighting score over time. This is crucial in ensuring an appropriate clinical response and improves both client experience and safety. Further to that, developments were made to an existing tool widely used in the literature, resulting in a scoring system which now allows for a more accurate weighting score for clients. Pilot phases of the tool with the Adult and Older Adult CMHT’s showed that it is both easy to use and informs the Caseload Management discussion. Future work involves rolling the tool out to the whole of the Health Board and also to other teams within the Mental Health Division.

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Why is it important?

Key points of the paper. • The article will discuss the existing caseload tool and show its limitations; • The article will describe the caseload tool which aims to easily and accurately record staff workload; • The article will discuss the feedback received after the tool was piloted by caseload supervisors and supervisees;