Who are Together?
• National Mental Health Charity
• Objective: to work alongside people to support them on their journey towards independence
• Advocacy, Residential Care, Criminal Justice & Community Support
– Community Support + Personalisation = Your Way
What is independence?
• Away from paid support
• Improvement to Wellbeing
• Building of resilience
• Managing health condition/coping
What is Your Way?
• Personalised Community Support
• Choice and control
• Goal focussed so it has to be flexible
• Working alongside people towards independence
• Building hope, esteem & confidence
How did Your Way come about?
• Wandsworth Day Centre Transformation
• Personalisation agenda
• Need to reduce costs
• Increase impact/improve outcomes
The 5 Essential Elements
• Open Approach & Excellent Customer Service
• Meaningful Personalisation
• Peer Support
• Service User Leadership
• Healthy Living in the Community
What does it look like to get support from Your Way?
• We - Listen, Ask, Engage• You - Lead your support• Goals - Milestones• Flexible and creative approach - Blank piece of paper - We come to you – community venues - Technology like smart phones and laptops
Aims of Evaluation
To examine whether support from Your Way led to:
• Increased mental wellbeing
• Increased health-promoting lifestyle activity
• The achievement of self-directed goals
• Improved service–user experiences.
• Cost comparison
Methodology
MHF – DOH Mixed Methods• Quantitative– Baseline, 3 months, 6 months, 12 months– WEMWBS, Health-Promoting Lifestyle Profile II
(HPLP II), Goal Attainment Scaling (GAS) (7). • Qualitative
- Baseline & 12 months- Semi-structured, peer interviewers
Numbers
• 13 Your Way Services
• Over 300 people – Quantitative
• 40 people - Qualitative
Demographics
• The average age of participants was 48 years (range 17-84)
• Just over half (51%) were male
• Nearly 90% were from a white British background
• Most frequently reported diagnostics categories were
depression (25%) and schizophrenia and psychosis (24%)
• Just under half (47%, n=129/275) reported that they had a
physical disability
Findings
• Wellbeing - There were statistically significant increases in wellbeing
in the first three months of service use for people who enrolled on
the evaluation within a month of accessing support from Your Way
• Lifestyle - There were statistically significant improvements in
relation to social life and relationships, a sense of meaning, dealing
with health professionals, and health-promoting lifestyle activity for
people who enrolled on the evaluation within a month of accessing
Your Way.
Conclusions
• Important findings in relation to wellbeing, health promoting lifestyle activity and goal attainment.
• Participants were positive about Your Way and felt understood by staff; and some were able to reduce their contact with statutory services with support from Your Way.
• Cost comparisons between Your Way and other services appear to suggest some cost benefits if Your Way works on a large-scale basis or is provided as part of a broader range of services rather than in isolation.
• Further work is needed to better understand how innovative, community-based support services can help support people with mental health problems and which groups benefit most.
ChallengesShort term interventions
VSLow referral rates
• Change to eligibility criteria • Low roll out of Personal Budgets• Contractual limitations• Hearts and minds
What have we learnt?
• Collation of right sort of data • Continual evaluation and review• Reflection on aims and objectives of services• Embedding personalisation takes time and requires
the above• Looking at physical health & wellbeing as a whole –
‘integration’• People hate forms
QUESTIONS