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Police officers in the UK frequently experience traumatic events and work pressures, and these can have a detrimental impact on mental health. A psychological surveillance programme has been implemented and clinically evaluated. This paper reports an economic evaluation of the programme.

A decision analytic model was developed to explore programme costs, outcomes and return on investment for a notional cohort of 1,000 police personnel (officers and staff). The model parameters were obtained from a large data set of sequential psychological surveillance results. Changes in individual work productivity were derived from a workability measure included in the survey.

The modelled expected total cost incurred to screen 1,000 participants was £84,287 ($106,971). The expected net increase in work productivity for those receiving interventions was valued at £241,672 ($306,713). This result represents a return on investment of 187%. Sensitivity analyses showed that the model was robust to changes in key parameters.

Police personnel experiencing traumatic events may need specialist support from occupational health services or psychological therapy. Screening or surveillance can detect mental health problems, but its cost-effectiveness has been previously unknown.

The value for money of providing surveillance within the police force to detect mental health problems is assessed in this research. The gains in terms of increased work are evident. In similar environmental working conditions, this could extend to emergency services globally.

The police are often called upon to deal with the lowest points in people’s lives. The findings have implications for police forces wishing to support officers to be able to provide the best of themselves in these situations.

There have been no previous studies in policing that have concluded that running a psychological surveillance programme in policing is financially viable. Although this requires initial investment, this paper models that the extra costs incurred are more than offset by improved work productivity.

There have been few economic evaluations of joint working between social and health care. This paper focuses on collaboration between professionals providing care for people aged 75 and over, and examines the economic costs of contacts made by social workers with community nurses, GPs and older people or their carers. Two areas were studied, one where social care and primary care services were co‐located, and the other with social work teams located separately from local health services. The two forms of social care location had an impact on contacts and costs but overall it was fairly small. Contact costs made up only a small amount of the overall costs of care These findings suggest that altering the organisational arrangements for care delivery may improve the process of care delivery, but result in only minor changes to the proportion of overall resources directed to older service users.

The purpose of this paper is to describe the delivery of the first clinically led, inter-professional Pathway Homeless team in a mental health trust, within the King’s Health Partners hospitals in South London. The Kings Health Partners Pathway Homeless teams have been operating since January 2014 at Guy’s and St Thomas’ (GStT) and Kings College Hospital and expanded to the South London and Maudsley in 2015 as a charitable pilot, now continuing with short-term funding.

This paper outlines how the team delivered its key aim of improving health and housing outcomes for inpatients. It details the service development and integration within a mental health trust incorporating the experience of its sister teams at Kings and GStT. It goes on to show how the service works across multiple hospital sites and is embedded within the Trust’s management structures.

Innovations including the transitional arrangements for patients’ post-discharge are described. In the first three years of operation the team saw 237 patients. Improved housing status was achieved in 74 per cent of patients with reduced use of unscheduled care after discharge. Early analysis suggests a statistically significant reduction in bed days and reduced use of unscheduled care.

The paper suggests that this model serves as an example of person centred, value-based health that is focused on improving care and outcomes for homeless inpatients in mental health settings, with the potential to be rolled-out nationally to other mental health Trusts.

The cardinal point to note here is that the development (and unfortunately the likely potential) of area policy is intimately related to the actual character of British social policy. Whilst area policy has been strongly influenced by Pigou's welfare economics, by the rise of scientific management in the delivery of social services (cf Jaques 1976; Whittington and Bellamy 1979), by the accompanying development of operational analyses and by the creation of social economics (see Pigou 1938; Sandford 1977), social policy continues to be enmeshed with the flavours of Benthamite utilitatianism and Social Darwinism (see, above all, the Beveridge Report 1942; Booth 1889; Rowntree 1922, 1946; Webb 1926). Consequently, for their entire history area policies have been coloured by the principles of a national minimum for the many and giving poorer areas a hand up, rather than a hand out. The preceived need to save money (C.S.E. State Apparatus and Expenditure Group 1979; Klein 1974) and the (supposed) ennobling effects of self help have been the twin marching orders for area policy for decades. Private industry is inadvertently called upon to plug the resulting gaps in public provision. The conjunction of a reluctant state and a meandering private sector has fashioned the decaying urban areas of today. Whilst a large degree of party politics and commitment has characterised the general debate over the removal of poverty (Holman 1973; MacGregor 1981), this has for the most part bypassed the ‘marginal’ poorer areas (cf Green forthcoming). Their inhabitants are not usually numerically significant enough to sway general, party policies (cf Boulding 1967) and the problems of most notably the inner cities has been underplayed.