The Ten Essential Shared Capabilities A Framework for the Whole of the Mental Health Workforce
The Ten Essential Shared Capabilities for Mental Health Practice
Working in Partnership. Developing and maintaining constructive working relationships with service
users, carers, families, colleagues, lay people and wider community networks. Working positively with
any tensions created by conflicts of interest or aspiration that may arise between the partners in care.
Respecting Diversity. Working in partnership with service users, carers, families and colleagues to
provide care and interventions that not only make a positive difference but also do so in ways that
respect and value diversity including age, race, culture, disability, gender, spirituality and sexuality.
Practising Ethically. Recognising the rights and aspirations of service users and their families,
acknowledging power differentials and minimising them whenever possible. Providing treatment and
care that is accountable to service users and carers within the boundaries prescribed by national
(professional), legal and local codes of ethical practice.
Challenging Inequality. Addressing the causes and consequences of stigma, discrimination, social
inequality and exclusion on service users, carers and mental health services. Creating, developing or
maintaining valued social roles for people in the communities they come from.
Promoting Recovery. Working in partnership to provide care and treatment that enables service users
and carers to tackle mental health problems with hope and optimism and to work towards a valued life
style within and beyond the limits of any mental health problem.
Identifying People’s Needs and Strengths. Working in partnership to gather information to agree
health and social care needs in the context of the preferred lifestyle and aspirations of service users
their families, carers and friends.
Providing Service User Centred Care. Negotiating achievable and meaningful goals; primarily from
the perspective of service users and their families. Influencing and seeking the means to achieve these
goals and clarifying the responsibilities of the people who will provide any help that is needed, including
systematically evaluating outcomes and achievements.
Making a Difference. Facilitating access to and delivering the best quality, evidence-based, valuesbased health and social care interventions to meet the needs and aspirations of service users and their families and carers.
Promoting Safety and Positive Risk Taking. Empowering the person to decide the level of risk they
are prepared to take with their health and safety. This includes working with the tension between
promoting safety and positive risk taking, including assessing and dealing with possible risks for service users, carers, family members, and the wider public.
Personal Development and Learning. Keeping up-to-date with changes in practice and participating
in life-long learning, personal and professional development for one’s self and colleagues through
supervision, appraisal and reflective practice.
