Celebrating 10 years of community-based care in our Cork and Lucan Dean Clinics

Throughout the week of 4 November 2019, St Patrick’s Mental Health Services (SPMHS) is marking the 10 year anniversary of our Dean Clinics in Cork and Lucan. Service users, visitors and staff in both locations can enjoy special deliveries of cupcakes and goodie bags to celebrate the milestone 10 years since the Cork and Lucan clinics first opened their doors. The Dean Clinics provide a network of community-based clinics, aiming to make mental health services accessible to every area of Ireland. The Cork and Lucan clinics stand among some of the first of the network, which now counts five adult and two adolescent clinics, as well as four associate clinics nationwide.

Development of the Cork and Lucan clinics

The concept of the Dean Clinics was first realised over 11 years ago, aiming to empower mental health recovery in the community. The clinics based on an Integrated Model of Care, completing the circle of inpatient and day care by meeting the mental health needs of service users in the community.

The first Dean Clinic opened on 15 April 2008 in Capel Street, Dublin, with the clinics in Cork and Lucan clinics launching in 2009 to further extend the network. The Dean Clinics represent a dynamic network and, over the ten years since their launch, the clinics in Cork and Lucan have witnessed significant development.

Both clinics provide multidisciplinary team assessments and service user-centred follow-up, catering for a wide range of mental health difficulties. Care and treatment is based on individualised care plans, which may include attending group programmes through centralised day care services or individual therapy.

Dean Clinic Cork also offers a discrete adolescent service, including multidisciplinary team assessments and individual therapy. The development of adult and adolescent group therapy in Dean Clinic Cork is high on the agenda for 2020. This development will improve access to mental health care in Cork and is evidence of our commitment to achieve our Changing Minds. Changing Lives. strategy.

Debbie van Tonder, Programme Manager of the Dean Clinics at SPMHS, says:

“We are delighted to celebrate 10 years of community-based mental health care through our Dean Clinics in Cork and Lucan. Over this time, the dedication of all staff working at and with these clinics has been integral to their development and to ensuring that the experience of service users coming through their doors is hopeful, empowering and focused on recovery. Everyone is entitled to good mental health, and we look forward to many more years of empowering service users on their journeys of mental health recovery”.

Expansion of Dean Clinic network

In the ten years since the Dean Clinics in Cork and Lucan opened, the network has further expanded, with clinics launched in Donaghmede, Sandyford, and Galway, and the latter also having a satellite clinic in Ennis.

In 2018, the Dublin-based clinics amalgamated to form an integrated new, purpose-built Dean Clinic St Patrick’s on the St Patrick’s University Hospital campus. This year, the adolescent Dean Clinic in Lucan relocated to the Dean Clinic Sandyford, to ease service users’ transition from the adolescent to the young adult service, which is also delivered from the Sandyford clinic.

Today, services and treatments offered across the Dean Clinics network include multidisciplinary team assessments, medical and nursing reviews, cognitive behavioural therapy, bereavement counselling, psychology, occupational therapy, family therapy, addiction therapy and dietetics.
Exciting developments for the network over the last number of years include the establishment of the Referral and Assessment team, the introduction of the Prompt Assessment of Needs, and the launch of the new electronic health record system, eSwift.

In 2018, 17,784 appointments took place across our Dean Clinic network, including 15,801 adult appointments and 1,983 adolescent appointments and underlining the importance of making focused, effective mental health services available in the community.