ACT Teams
I have seen the future and it is ACT teams, but they should really be called multi service teams. Here in Ontario a Richard Sabo has been seconded by the Ministry of Health to implement ACT teams across the province. I was fortunate to listen to a presentation by Richard. The ACT teams I knew were somewhat controversial, because of their name if nothing else, Assertive Community Treatment. The few that are in existence in Ontario are dedicated to help the very ill. The one in Toronto I read about targets the homeless mentally ill, a population I would have thought should be in hospital. ACT teams as I understood them were a method of ensuring that people took their medication, and although I knew how critical that was in schizophrenia, I could understand why consumer advocates would feel that was coercive. The image was of an ACT team nurse hunting someone down in the streets to give them a needle of medication. I couldn't have been more wrong. ACT teams have received a lot of inappropriate bad press, probably because they may put many established agencies out of business.
In an ACT team you have 10-12 health care professionals using evidence based practices. It would include a psychiatrist, nurse, case manager, occupational therapist, addiction specialist, etc. etc. The ACT team is typically available 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Because they are a team that provides all services they learn more about the individual then any single service from a variety of agencies. They can learn who the person is, and they share information amongst themselves. No other agency or service can do that.
You see a psychiatrist at an outpatient clinic. You have a case manager from a different agency. For employment you go to a different agency. An addiction counselor works for in quite a different agency. None of those people are seeing more then the part of the person their service supports and none of them are talking to each other, and certainly not every day like an ACT team. The client ends up having several friendly visitors who really don't know very much about them, because these friendly visitors see so many people, and spend so little time with each person.
An ACT team can realistically look at what is needed for the recovery of an individual. A lot of research has been done in the last ten years on "recovery" and what that means. It has been generating what are called "best practices" or "evidence based practices", and they all point to the ACT team as the most effective method of service delivery. Treatment, rehabilitation and support, can be provided simultaneously by an integrated team of specialists. ACT teams are a best practice that is also the best method of delivering best practices.
Latest Articles