§ Mr. Frank FieldTo ask the Secretary of State for Health if he will review the experiment in release of long-stay mentally ill patients known as the "Daily Living Programme".
§ Mr. FreemanThe pattern of care and treatment used in the daily living programme has been used very successfully for some years both in parts of the United States of America and in Australia.
The present research programme is to assess the value of this pattern of care in an urban environment in England. The daily living programme is designed to give people with early and acute mental illness the treatment that they need without unnecessary use of in-patient care. The patients in the daily living programme can be admitted or readmitted to hospital whenever it is considered necessary by their clinical team and preliminary results show that over 80 per cent. of patients in the programme have been admitted to hospital during their time on the programme. Patients in the programme can stay in hospital for as long as is judged necessary. The daily living programme is not concerned with the rehabilitation of long-stay patients. The programme is a research project, which has been partly funded by the Department of Health for three years until September 1990. A full evaluation is due at the end of 1990.