UK Recovery Federation Consultation 2010: Mental Health and Recovery

Consultation 2010: Mental Health and Recovery

The following brief report incorporates the comments and feedback received from all who attended the Mental Health and Recovery Workshops at theUKRF Conference held on the 7-05-2010 at the Gujarat Centre in Preston.

The aim of the workshops was to have constructive dialogue on the following key themes:

What is good at the moment regarding Mental Health and Recovery?
How can we develop this?
What are the Gaps in service provision?

After two very involved and thought provoking sessions the following key issues were identified.

What is good at the moment?

- Greater recognition of the complex issue of mental health and substance use

- More awareness of services

- Mental health and substance use being given greater priority within the treatment field

- The availability of alternative therapies and talking therapies as opposed to medicalising the problem

- Accepting that addiction is a mental health issue

- Improved communication between services

- More mental health practitioners working in substance use services

- Risks are being recognised more

- Care plans focusing upon greater consultation

- Improved aftercare treatment and support plans

- The use of different models to help people diagnosed with dual diagnosis

- People in services and in recovery being consulted more

- Less stigma

- The treatment field is experiencing a huge recovery focused transition which dovetails with substance use services’ shift in focus

This initial part of the session enabled the group to celebrate what is good. The group identified that this is often missing and that coming from a strength-based model is more productive and empowering.

How can we develop this?

- Services working together and learning from each others to develop meaning and purpose to support those in services and in recovery

- Increase the provision for support groups; self help groups, taster groups and outreach work

- Increased training opportunities

- Recovery communities featuring visible champions for dual diagnosis

- More campaigning to reduce stigma for dual diagnosis

- Greater service user consultation

- Wider availability of counselling in the community

- Increase the number of mental health practitioners in drugs teams

- Reduce number of commissioners and divert money into frontline services

- More help to enable people into work out of benefits trap, which could reduce stigma

- Develop the marketing and communication of help that is on offer

- Develop more recovery networks incorporating peer mentoring services and volunteering roles

- Developing voluntary organisation further as they can do so much with so little, especially when service user led

Posing this question led to constructive and focused dialogue, and the findings represent a wide range of diverse opinions from service users, ex service users and professionals working in the field of both substance use and/or mental health. All agreed that it was important not to undermine the positives that had been identified and it was felt that, to strengthen future developments, service users needed to be at the heart of future consultation and decision making processes.

What are the gaps?

- Not enough service users informing policy and service development

- Lack of knowledge and understanding from psychologists and psychiatrists regarding the effects of substance use.What happened to social psychiatry?

- Lack of training in the substance use field amongst workers leading to difficulties around diagnosis of mental health conditions

- Greater application of effective communication amongst professionals

- Offenders in prison being undiagnosed and their needs not being met

- Lack of outreach in certain areas, post code lottery

- Need increased access to psychological services rather than focusing upon drugs and crime

It is easy when considering gaps in provision to fall back into a negative and reactive stance towards inequalities and inconsistency within the field of substance use and mental health. However workshop participants focused upon considering questions from a strength based model, agreeing that to get greater cohesion within services, service users’ voices need to be heard and not be seen as a tokenistic gesture if we want to achieve modern services.

Keith Robertson (Lancashire)
Martine Bell (Lancashire)

UK Recovery Federation Service User Involvement & Recovery Event 09.09.10

Service User Involvement & Recovery Event 09.09.10

As many of you will know we held our first National UK Recovery Federation (UKRF) conference in May. Lots of workshops at the conference covered lots of different Recovery themes and feedback from all of these (Mutual Aid and Recovery has gone up) is being posted here on Wired In over the next few weeks.

Comments received will feed into the development of the UKRF Recovery Manifesto which will be released in draft form (for further consultation) at the UK Recovery Walk in Glasgow in September.

As part of the manifesto development (amongst other things) we are in the process of organising follow-up UKRF Regional conferences which will kick off in September and we aim to hold these in most, if not all, of the UK regions from September until Spring 2011 when we will hold the 2nd UKRF National Conference.

The most popular workshop at the May conference was ‘Service User Involvement and Recovery’ and Dave Rankine (Lancashire DAAT’s SU Involvement Officer) found himself facilitating a couple of huge groups. There was loads to talk about in the workshops and not enough time.

So we are really pleased to let you know that there will be a follow-up conference, which we are organising with the NTA, totally dedicated to Service User Involvement and Recovery in the North-West. This event will take place at the Gujarat Centre in Preston on the 9th of September and is open to Service Users and people from the Recovery Community within the North-West.

You’ll notice we’ve suggested the two groups might be separate when you might hope ‘Service Users’ would be part of ‘Recovery Communities’. This ‘separation’ (real or otherwise) will be explored at the conference.

The programme for the conference, which will be an all day affair, will be circulated soon but we can confirm it will be focused around workshops exploring Service User Involvement, the launching of new regional North-West Recovery Forums and the development of firmer links with Recovery Communities in each of the five North-West regions.

There will be a couple of speakers and they will address SU involvement and Recovery within the context of the new ‘era’ we find ourselves in. Notions of the ‘Big Society’, as promoted by the new Con/Lib Dem government will be explored.

Service Users and people in Recovery Communities are part of this ‘Big Society’ and the UKRF believes there is much work that needs to be done to define what ‘Big Society’ actually means within Recovery Communities. More importantly, in these challenging times, we need to make ‘Big Society’ work for those who are most vulnerable.

There are many paths to Recovery and we make them as we walk them.

For booking details please see the email below from Mark Gilman, NTA North-West Manager.

“Those of you that have seen the DVD ‘Once Upon a Time in the North West’ will know about the North West Recovery Forum but for those of you that haven’t seen the DVD (copies available from Suzanne Rileysuzanne.riley@nta-nhs.org.uk) there is clearly a fit between the pioneering recovery work that has taken place in the North West and emerging ideas around ‘Social Capital’, ‘Recovery Capital’ and the ‘Big Society’.

We are currently in the process of updating all our contacts for membership of the North West Recovery Forum and if you, or anyone else you are in contact with, would like to join the North West Recovery Forum please send your contact details directly to Merritta Hadley (Merritta.hadley@nta-nhs.org.uk) and we will add your details to our list.

We are reviewing the role of traditional service user involvement in the light of the recovery agenda – the North West Service User Forum is alive and well with representatives from most of the local North West areas but there can be some real differences between service user involvement forums and recovery forums.

Most members of the North West Recovery Forum are not using services anymore and therefore, by definition, they are not service users – rather “they are in recovery”. For your information: DDN will be publishing a list of groups in the next edition (Monday 19th July).

We are also in early discussions with colleagues in the UK Recovery Federation to try and align our recovery forums with the UK Recovery Federation and to this end, we are holding an all day joint event with UKRF at the Gujarat Hindu Society Centre, Preston on 9 September 2010.

To register for this event on 9 September 2010 email Merritta Hadley (Merritta.hadley@nta-nhs.org.uk) by Friday 30 July.

Workshops will be organised around the 5 sub-regions (Cheshire, Cumbria, Greater Manchester, Lancashire and Merseyside) so that we come away with the bare bones of 5 sub-regional recovery forums. Whilst there is no charge for this event, we will need to make sure that all 22 North West localities are represented and that places are spread across the 5 sub-regions, so you will be advised of your allocated space on 12 August 2010.

The key note speakers will be:

· Mark Gilman (NTA NW Recovery Forum)
· Noreen Oliver (Recovery Group UK)
· Alistair Sinclair (UK Recovery Federation)

In the meantime, if you would like to discuss your local (or sub-regional) recovery forum arrangements or if you would like one of us to present to your forums, please do not hesitate to ask the relevant NTA Deputy Regional Manager as follows:

Lancashire (Phil Conley)
Cumbria (Mark Harris)
Greater Manchester (Susan Johal)
Cheshire (Ian Houghton)
Merseyside (Abby Jones)

There is also an opportunity for sponsoring organisations to have exhibition stands and stalls around the edge of the main auditorium on the 9th September 2010 – please discuss this further with Suzanne Riley (suzanne.riley@nta-nhs.org.uk).

Please do forward details of this event to any interested colleagues and please note the closing date to register for this event is Friday 30 July.

Best regards
Mark Gilman
NTA North-West Manager”