2SJT topic
Service Delivery
Waiting lists, capacity and policy limit a service, and you decide what to do when a limit conflicts with a client’s need.
Practise Service Delivery12 scenarios
What makes these scenarios hard
The individual client has to be weighed against the whole caseload. Time given to one person is taken from another, and answers that ignore that are as weak as answers that ignore the person in front of you.
What a strong answer usually does
- Make the clinical case visible and documented, and disagree with a service decision openly rather than working around it in private.
- Do not transfer service-level frustration onto the client.
- Escalate through the proper route, and record that you did.
- In England, NHS Talking Therapies works as stepped care: its manual says people “should be offered the least intrusive intervention appropriate for their needs”.
What the standards say
- HCPC 7.1, 7.2: report concerns; support others to do the same
- HCPC 10.1: records that show your reasoning
- HCPC 6.1: reduce the risk of harm
- BPS Code of Ethics and Conduct: Responsibility
- NHS Talking Therapies for anxiety and depression manual, version 7 (updated March 2024): stepped care, in England
Sources: HCPC, Standards of conduct, performance and ethics (2024), checked ; BPS, Code of Ethics and Conduct (2021), checked ; NHS England, NHS Talking Therapies manual, checked .