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Evidence "community services"

Reaching out: the psychology of assertive outreach.
This book is a collection of chapters that all aim to examine psychological processes involved in assertive outreach. The introduction provides definitions and the evolution of assertive outreach. “Assertive outreach is a flexible and creative client-centred approach to engaging service users in a practical delivery of a wide range of services to meet the complex health and social needs and wants. It is a strategy that requires service providers to take an active role, working with service users, to secure resources and choices in treatment, rehabilitation, psychosocial support, functional and practical help, and advocacy...in equal priorities. (Joint Statement by SCMH, CMHSD, IMPACT, TULIP, North Birmingham AO Service, Kush Housing Association, The Working Together in London Initiative, 1999). It includes the origins of assertive outreach from Training and Community Living (TCL) to Assertive Community Treatment (ACT) and the Programme for Assertive Community Treatment (PACT), as well as differentiates psychological skills and psychological therapy in assertive outreach. It emphasizes the neglect of psychological therapies within ACT and how this neglect has caused ACT to drift from its original psychosocial philosophy of care and to be perceived to promote the medical model. The first half of the book outlines a psychological approach to the task of assertive outreach, beginning with the primary task of engaging service users. The second half of the book is devoted to the task of delivering psychological therapies.
Cupitt, C. (2010). Reaching out: the psychology of assertive outreach. Routledge.
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Critical ingredients of assertive community treatment: Judgments of the experts
Reports experts’ opinions on the ideal specifications of the ACT model. Describes two subgroups of experts — those who advocated large multidisciplinary teams (100 or more clients) with day and evening shifts and those who advocated smaller, often generalist, teams (approximately 50 clients).
McGrew, J.H. & Bond, G.R. (1995). Critical ingredients of assertive community treatment: Judgments of the experts. The Journal of Mental Health Administration, 22(2), 113-125.

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