Important business.

The new guide for older people's mental health services, published by the Department of Health ( 2005 ), recognises that up to 50 per cent of older people in hospital may be experiencing some form of mental health condition. The focus of the guidance includes delirium, dementia and depression.

Therapeutic touch and dementia care: an ongoing journey.

Touch is considered a core aspect of care provision and therapeutic relationships. Therapeutic touch allows nurses to facilitate healing and forge therapeutic relationships through touch or non-touch and maintain channels of communication often lost in dementia as the disease progresses. This article reports the findings of a research project to examine the effectiveness of therapeutic touch in dementia care.

Developing continuing care: towards a teaching nursing home.

This article describes a partnership between staff, residents and relatives of a nursing home for older people with mental health problems, and lecturers within an academic department of nursing. The aim of the partnership is to develop practice and to improve the setting of the care home as an environment for living, working and learning. In our attempts to create a teaching nursing home, we recognize the need to ensure that all participants - residents, relative and staff - feel that they are valued members of the team. We describe our progress to date, together with some of the challenges of working together.

Learning to nurse in care homes: student support.

An increasing number of care homes in the UK now provide placements for students undertaking pre-registration nursing programmes, enabling them to develop knowledge and skills in the continuing care of older people. In this article the authors describe an initiative to support nursing staff working in care homes and prepare them for their role in student education. The impetus for the initiative came from student feedback and evaluation of their placement experiences. These suggested that staff in some care homes were not fully prepared to help meet students' learning needs. Students' concerns about the quality of care in some homes also made clear the need for a forum in which the evidence base for practice in continuing care settings could be discussed and debated. The initiative combined the development of new roles with regular opportunities to share information and feedback.

Is the hospital sick role a barrier to patient participation?

The sick role is a complex behaviour that allows a person who is ill to depend on carers. This article discusses the parameters of the sick role, explains how it is prompted by admission to hospital and asks whether it can act as a barrier to patients' participation in decisions on their care. It considers why some patients are reluctant to relinquish the sick role and suggests ways for nurses to help these patients to play an active part in their own recovery.

Congress review.

RCN Congress 2003 was, as usual, a challenging mix of debates and an ever-growing number of stimulating fringe events. Members of the steering committees of the two RCN older people forums set out with a clear aim of representing the profile of older people and older people's nursing in as many debates and fringe events as possible.

Congress fringe event.

Complementing the care of older people Jointly presented by the Nurses Working with Older People Forum, the Mental Health and Older People Forum, and the Complementary Therapies Forum Thursday May 1 11.30am-1pm Majestic Hotel, Harrogate This interactive and practical workshop offers an opportunity to look at the ways in which complementary therapies can enhance the care of older people in a variety of settings. We will discuss and experience T'ai Chi and massage and share the experiences of other nurses who have used complementary therapies in their work with older people. This is a chance to see how complementary therapies could be used in your area.

Mental health and older people.

Members of the RCN Mental Health and Older People steering committee met with colleagues from the Nurses Working with Older People Forum in September to set our strategy for next year.

Things can only get better.

recently by the Audit Commission, updates the findings of the original Forget Me Not first published in 2000, which highlighted significant gaps in mental health services for older people. The latest publication is based on an extensive investigation of local services and includes the responses of 5,000 carers and 8,000 GPs from all over England.

Plans for networking.

A key area of development for the committee in 2002 is to continue to promote awareness of the mental health needs of older people within the RCN as an organisation and to link with other individuals and agencies with an interest in the area.

Draft bill response.

Many readers will be aware that in June of this year the government published a draft Mental Health Bill to introduce a new framework for mental health care in England and Wales. This is arguably the biggest review of the mental health system since the 1950s. Many people regard this overhaul as both necessary and long overdue. However, concerned organisations, including the RCN, believe that there are areas of serious concern within the draft Bill, which have important implications for users of mental health services.

Mental health and older people.

Much has been written in recent months about the issues associated with the long-term care of older people and the funding of nursing care. Some may even think that they have read and heard more than enough. However, the policy and practice group of the RCN Forum for Older People and Mental Health believes it is an issue that cannot be ignored and that nursing care should be free at the point of delivery irrespective of where it is delivered.

Therapeutic touch in dementia care.

Touch, in its purest sense, is considered by many as a core aspect of care-giving and of the nurse-patient relationship. Touch is a fundamental element in nursing work and one of the most personally experienced of all communicative sensations. Some believe it to be the 'mother of the senses', symbolising caring and providing validation of existence as an individual ( Autton 1989 , Estabrooks and Morse 1992 , Weiss 1992).