National Specification for psychological therapies and interventions: self assessment tool

Introduction

The National Specification for Psychological Therapies and Interventions was published in September 2023. The Specification aims to support services to improve the delivery of psychological therapies and interventions. The Specification sets out what people should expect if they need a psychological therapy or intervention and what services and teams should do to improve the delivery of psychological therapies and interventions for people in Scotland.

Development of the self-assessment tool

This self-assessment tool has been developed to support the implementation of the Specification and to help Services assess current delivery of psychological therapies and interventions against the Specification outcomes. The assessment tool identifies areas of good practice and areas where service provision could be improved.

National Specification for the delivery of psychological therapies and interventions in Scotland

The self assessment tool applies to the seven outcomes in the Specification, which apply to services. These are set out in the Specification in the section What this means for services, teams, and professionals delivering psychological practice:

The outcomes are:

Outcome 1 – High quality care and support

Outcome 2 – People are fully Involved in decisions

Outcome 3 – High quality interventions and treatments

Outcome 4 – Rights are acknowledged, respected and delivered

Outcome 5 – People are fully involved in planning and agreeing transitions

Outcome 6 – We fully involve people, their families and carers

Outcome 7 – Confidence in the staff delivering services

Three national Once For Scotland guides are available to support services in the delivery of digital evidence based psychological treatments, the use of delivery improvement tools and development of psychology operational plans.

Guidance for completing the self assessment

Please consider local evidence and activity against each of the outcomes in the assessment and indicate how well you think your team meets these using a RAG status (red, amber, green) or traffic-light system.

1 = red – not met or limited implementation

2 = amber – partially met or some implementation

3 = green – fully met or significant implementation

The score can be supported by the sources of evidence and examples of activity provided within the assessment. Where this is not available, please mention this in the evidence/activity section.

Who should complete the self assessment?

The Director / Head of Psychology should oversee the completion of this document and should be designated as the named lead responsible for planning and coordinating the completion and return of assessments. This person should identify additional leads for each area as required i.e. psychology leads and the business management team for psychology to complete the assessment.

Use of the tool

The tool has been developed to aid local planning and monitoring of high quality psychological services as part of regular routine cycles of internal reporting to local executive teams. It is recommended it is used along with the use of other monitoring and planning tools (e.g. the Patient Access Support Tool (PASTool) published by Public Health Scotland). These tools, along with the Once for Scotland guides linked to the specification, can be used to support improvement and assurance of delivery of psychological therapies and services.

Instructions for completion

We have found that it is helpful to consider available sources of evidence prior to completing the self assessment, as well as resources required for completion.

1. Please try and discuss each of the assessment questions with appropriate members of staff within the service to decide how well an outcome is currently being met.

2. Please provide evidence sources and improvement activity. Examples of information sources are provided in the tool. There may be differences in provision between teams and reflecting this may feel subjective. The aim is to identify good practice as well as gaps in evidence and areas for improvement.