Personalisation and MH Lead Session

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Personalisation and MH Lead Session
Anne Beales Director of Service User Involvement
Together Working for Wellbeing Management
Committee Member NSUN National Survivor User
Network Thank you for inviting me to speak at
your Annual Away Day
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Involving and Empowering

• One measure of how we are doing will be to see
  how voices that are seldom heard are included and
  listened to.
• Role of the Network (NSUN) is to link service
  user led groups with each other. The report
  dancing to our own tunes will be launched in
  MarchCommissioned WISH to map Service User
  Involvement in Forensic Arenas
• To facilitate discussions/ conversations with the
  right people at the right time at the right place
  in the right way.

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Involving and Empowering

• To provide an infrastructure that supports
  capacity building for service user led groups
  locally is a pre requisite for peer support led
  initiatives
• Because Peers are part of our community they are
  best placed and will be sensitive in delivering
  what we need
• Its on this basis that peer led support
  initiatives are critical in implementing the
  personalisation agenda
• Local voluntary sector need to support service
  user led groups transforming themselves into
  becoming providers

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A Wellbeing Approach to Involvement

• It is essential people benefit from their
  involvement!
• One Approach

No short cuts
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Conversations that need to happen

• How far does the service user movement go along
  with reforms or indeed go along with the same
  reform more than once?
• Obama was asked bluntly struggle against or
  snuggle up to
• eg. Personalisation Agenda - Fears around
  funding
• Involved in CPA consultation wasnt this
  supposed to be putting us at the centre, giving
  us choice?

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Conversations

• Trauma we live in a society where domestic
  violence, racism, housing deprivation and
  poverty, childhood sexual abuse and sexual
  assault, bullying in education and at work exist
  and the percentage of people needing support will
  be proportionate to the levels of distress people
  experience.
• 70 of people in prisons, experience more than 1
  diagnosis of mental distress plus addiction
  issues.
• Recent research has indicated that debt is a
  much stronger risk factor for mental disorder
  than low income
• There were an estimated 828,000 people with
  moderate to server depression in England in
  2007
• (Source govt office for science Mental Capital
  and Wellbeing Project Oct 2008)

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Service User Leadership

• Experience itself valued and offers guidance
  about what works (is this what Volition should be
  sharing?)
• Independence self governance
• Peer led services - Leeds Crisis Service, UK
  - the living Room, USA
• Peer led support Community based Lighthouse,
  NZ

Alternative to Acute Admission
Empower and Connect
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Services or Support

• If we accept that distress is expressed via
• anxiety people becoming depressed people
  experiencing almost insolvable conflict
  experience loud thoughts voices unusual
  beliefs and that others use food cutting
  themselves as their expression of a silent
  scream we then have the basis to develop
  support that works

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Services or Support

• Therefore the type of support that people require
  has to be addressed at two levels
• Personal self directed support self
  management
• Within the context of society, the service user
  movement must ultimately concern itself with
  anti racism improved housing, awareness and
  articulation of the impact of domestic violence
  sexual assaultThe way we address the above is
  political and in some way any anti stigma and
  social inclusion initiatives should be related to
  this. Equal rights women - BME community -
  Gay/Lesbian community voluntary sector need
  to be part of these struggles

Peer Led Support
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Services or Support
Services
Community
Community
Support in the community
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Overcoming Barriers

• Critical to work within partnership to overcome
  barriers,for example,
• Power issues such as how seriously our expertise
  is valued
• Practical how hard can it be to provide cash
  reimbursement on the day? This still doesn't
  happen
• Given the current economic climate, based on
  experience of past recessions, expenditure on
  equal opportunities which now days would include
  service user involvement, would be an easy target
  to cut

Portsmouth Service User Involvement Charter
MHPF Service User Leads Meeting sharing best
practice
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Overcoming Barriers

• Already there is a lack of investment locally,
  regionally and nationally in service user
  involvement and leadership within the
  commissioning process.
• Commissioning the voluntary sector is NOT
  commissioning the direct voice of Service Users.
  
• Investment in Service User led groups locally,
  regionally and nationally, therefore, is a
  pre-requisite to having a direct voice in the
  commissioning process.
• This is the same for involving service users in
  partnerships with regulators.

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Overcoming Barriers

• Where is the investment? - this is a question
  that NSUN has been and is still asking
• What percentage of the total spend of the
  voluntary sector is allocated to service user
  involvement capacity and infrastructure?
• The more diverse the investment the better
  quality of voice and leadership will be available
  to inform about what works and what doesn't

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Developing Service User Involvement in Health
Care and Social Care

• Peer Led Support and solutions we know what
  works(Strategies for Living Alison Faulkner
  a decade ago)
• Five a day (Source Foresight Project Mental
  Capital and Wellbeing) Connect, be active, take
  notice, keep learning, give
• 5 accomplishments Community Presence Choice Com
  petency Dignity and Respect Valued
  relationships (John OBrien)
• Training of Social Workers, Mentoring of
  psychologists

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Developing Service User Involvement in Health
Care and Social Care

• Wellbeing at work cost of absenteeism 750
  million per year
• Presenteeism 900 million per year
• 83 million per year lost by firms due to
  employees who loose their jobs as a result of
  work related mental health problems.
• Therefore any peer led initiative that can impact
  positively to decrease this cost, will be a
  winner!
• Service user from Essex I dont care if
  supporting me costs the government less than it
  used to so they can save money, what matters to
  me is, it bloody works and I feel better

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Key Message

• Only when we have created well resourced service
  user led groups that are supported by a robust
  infrastructure and these groups are providing
  leadership based on experience, will be know what
  is possible in combating stigma and implementing
  wellbeing for all in our communities.

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Anne Beales Director of Service-user Involvement
Management Committee Member of NSUN 12, Old
Street, London EC1V 9BE 0207 780
7364 Anne-beales_at_together-uk.org
National Survivor User Network 27 - 29 Vauxhall
GroveVauxhall London, SW8 1SYLocal rate number
0845 602 0779www.nsun.org.uk