MH Charity Awarded Recovery Contract

The Mental Health Foundation has been awarded a contract to work with the Strategic Network for Mental Health to develop recovery focused practice within its mental health services. Over the next two years the Recovery in Action project will enable the Strategic Network for Mental Health to develop best practice about ways to support people with mental health problems.

The four organisations that make up the Strategic Network are Advance, Mind in Birmingham, Second Step and Sussex Oakleaf. From Autumn 2006 staff and service users from the organisations will participate in training and action learning.

Kathryn Hill, Director of Mental Health Programmes at the Mental Health Foundation said, “Most people with mental health problems have the potential to recover a life of meaning to them but they need the support of services to do so. The Recovery in Action project will work with the Strategic Network for Mental Health as it embeds recovery in both philosophy and practice into the mental health services at four pilot sites. The learnings of this project will be used to influence policy and practice at a national level.”

The outcomes of the project will include a model of best practice on the best way to deliver support based on the principle of recovery; a set of service user outcomes; a recovery checklist for organisations, a Recovery Training module; a tool to measure recovery outcomes and a report on the findings.

The Mental Health Foundation is the leading UK charity working to improve services for both people with mental health problems and people with learning disabilities. It is the only charity to fund and work with both service users and providers and plays an important role in funding research and new approaches to promotion, treatment and care.

The Strategic Network for Mental Health was established in 2002 and is a unique alliance of four organisations, all of which are committed to the provision of services designed to meet the needs of people with mental health problems. The network was set up to test the benefits of a national provider of community-based services (Advance based in Witney, Oxfordshire) forming a partnership with three smaller, regional providers who wished to remain independent – Second Step in Bristol, Mind in Birmingham and Sussex Oakleaf in West Sussex.