£1/2 million to change mental health landscape
10/10/2007
"It is becoming increasingly clear that the solutions to some of the challenges we face in areas like mental health will not be found in the conventional places and cannot be left to government and the NHS."
The 10 successful projects - which range from a board game that helps give patients a voice in the design of their own environment to a therapeutic farm-based project for traumatised refugees and asylum seekers - were chosen from over 500 applications. The ideas have come from existing mental health groups, frontline workers and individuals wishing to make a difference in their area.
The aim is that, with the right backing and guidance, each of the local initiatives will be supported to the point at which they can be adapted or rolled out at scale, on a national level. Each project will receive funding and ongoing support from NESTA and its partners in the Innovations in Mental Health scheme, the Mental Health Foundation, Mental Health Media, Mind, Rethink and The Sainsbury Centre for Mental Health.
Successful projects include Patient Opinion, which will receive just under £70,000 to adapt its innovative web-based approach to gathering patient feedback to enable those using mental health services to share their experiences online. The project will be run in partnership with an NHS Trust and information will be fed back to service providers and commissioners whilst preserving the privacy and autonomy of users.
Not-for-profit group, 'Innovations in Dementia', has secured £30,000 NESTA funding to pilot its techniques for supporting people with dementia to use computers in two Housing 21 Day Centres and develop training materials for care staff.
Commenting on the projects selected, NESTA CEO, Jonathan Kestenbaum said:
"It is becoming increasingly clear that the solutions to some of the challenges we face in areas like mental health will not be found in the conventional places and cannot be left to government and the NHS. The 10 projects we have selected prove that there are excellent ideas out there on the front line. With the right support, these sorts of local initiatives have the potential to have a big impact across the UK".
Margaret Hannah, Psychological Literacy Project Director and Consultant in Public Health in Fife, who was also successful in her application for funding to prototype a Human Resources Kit to support people in difficult situations, commented:
"The International Futures Forum is so grateful for NESTA's support and we are proud to have been selected to be part of the Innovations in Mental Health scheme. NESTA's support will be invaluable in helping us scale an idea that we believe will make a real contribution to communities' capacity to cope with the overwhelming challenges of our times."
Innovations in Mental Health is part of NESTA's Health Challenge – a series of experimental, high-impact projects and partnerships designed to demonstrate how to stimulate innovation in response to major social issues. Our focus is on understanding how to create new services, scale up social enterprises and support innovation in third sector organisations.
For further information or to request an interview, please contact the NESTA press office on 0207 438 2608.
NESTA
NESTA is the National Endowment for Science, Technology & the Arts. With endowed funds of over £300 million, our mission is to transform the UK's capacity for innovation. We do this in three main ways: by working to build a more pervasive culture of innovation in this country; by providing innovators with access to early stage capital; and by driving forward research into innovation, with a view to influencing policy.
The Mental Health Foundation
The Mental Health Foundation is a leading UK charity that provides information and policy recommendations, carries out research, campaigns and works to improve services for anyone affected by mental health problems, whatever their age and wherever they live. For more information please contact Laura Gibson on 020 7803 1130 or Fran Gorman on 020 7803 1128.
Innovations in Mental Health - projects
For further details about any of our Innovations in Mental Health projects, below, please visit: www.nesta.org.uk/mentalhealth.
Mental Health Lancashire Care Trust
SEED Project
A designer working within the NHS has devised a way of engaging mentally ill people within in-patient units in the re-design of their own environment. Her work began as part of the national drive to increase privacy, dignity and security.
The designer has developed a simple board game, based on monopoly, which gives those in the units a platform to talk about what they want from their environment and helps them overcome the difficulties they have voicing their opinions. The game has already been used with a group of service users resident in one inpatient unit and led to positive contributions to its design and refurbishment.
NESTA funding and support to the value of £5,000 will support the designer to turn her prototype into an actual board game – a project she is already working on with the University of Central Lancashire – and, potentially, to secure a manufacturer.
Trading Places
Trading Places Arts Project
This project will be an extension to a drop in volunteer project already running in the North East with Tyneside Cyrenians. The current project sees service users trade places with paid staff and, with their support, undertake all aspects of running the drop in centre, which provides practical support and advice to homeless people.
The NESTA funding of nearly £70,000 will be used to create a tailored programme of arts-based activities for the centre, determined by the patients themselves, in partnership with a major arts and social inclusion agency, Helix Arts. The programme will help tackle problems associated with mental ill-health and homelessness by engaging patients in activities which enable them to explore issues of identity, status and self-esteem.
This is the first time that Tyneside Cyrenians and Helix Arts have worked together. Critically, involvement in the programme will also ensure there is a regular point of engagement between those attending the centre and health and social care staff, which will help empower those using the service to ask for the other support they might needed.
Dementia Voice/Housing 21
'Innovations in Dementia' is a not-for-profit group with extensive experience of helping individuals with dementia to learn or re-learn computer skills. This project will test out a way of disseminating the group's experience to day care staff working with older people with dementia, through a combination of training and support.
The project will include pilot projects in two Housing 21 Day Centres designed to investigate the best ways of supporting people with dementia to use computers, and include an evaluation of the benefits of computer-based activities for people with dementia in day care settings as well as the effectiveness of the training process for care staff.
Part of the NESTA funding of almost £30,000 will provide the training, IT equipment and software required for the two pilot sites. It will also help 'Innovations in Dementia' develop accessible training materials for wider use.
Kent & Medway NHS Social Care Partnership
Buddy Scheme
This project would build on the work of Gillingham Community Mental Health Team's award-winning Buddy Scheme, which sees service users work with nursing, occupational therapy, and social work students to ensure they have an understanding of mental illness from a service users perspective.
The NESTA funding of £40,000 will pay for two part time posts – one for a mental health practitioner and one for a service user – to work together to co-ordinate student practice placements, support service users to become actively involved in all aspects of the project. It will also enable service users and practitioners to develop and publish training manuals and DVDs for target groups; to develop a Buddy Support Group and network; to continue to develop the website; and to organise a service user conference to showcase this and other projects as examples of service user involvement in service development.
International Futures Forum
Human Resource Kit
A Scottish-based international research organisation has designed a 'Human Resource Kit', which includes materials that individuals can use to support their own mental well-being.
It is being trialled with prisoners at a women's prison in Scotland, where it enhances existing psychological services, giving prisoners the skills to become peer tutors for other prisoners.
The organisation will use NESTA's funding to modify the kit, based on current feedback, and to create versions suitable for people with low literacy/no English, and for children. The plan is to set up a social enterprise and to produce 20 prototype kits for trial marketing.
Stepping Out
Step Forward
This project will build on the organisation's existing work running creative workshops with mental health patients in community, day centre and hospital settings. NESTA funding of £15,000 over two years will help take this project to the next level by working with people in secure or medium secure units and involving them in aspects of a major new theatre production, performed inside the unit and at mainstream community and theatre venues. Funding will also cover evaluation and dissemination of learning from this important area of work.
The project aims to help some of the most vulnerable mental health patients take a major step forward in their own healing and recovery – building self-esteem and self-confidence, encouraging interaction with others, and lessening the stigma of mental distress. Those involved will also have the opportunity to undergo training in aspects of theatre or live performance including creative writing, costume and set design, and sound and lighting operation, giving them the possibility of employment with the theatre company on leaving the unit.
Barts (Centre for Psychiatry)
Let's Talk
Led by a group of mental health clinicians and educators who already specialise in producing materials to teach clinical skills, this project will engage users of the mental health system in the creation of a series of communication skills workshops and an online interactive learning resource for use in medical and nursing curricula throughout the UK.
Its aim is to identify the barriers to effective communication between service providers and users that result from stereotypes and stigmatising around issues of gender, sexuality, faith and culture. The learning tools will be designed to help students reflect upon and process their feelings towards particular patients and problems, under guidance from teachers, before being placed in real life situations. NESTA will provide funding of £99,000.
Genesis Community
Exposing 'Subtle Abuse'
The aim of this project is to raise awareness of both staff and tenants in a housing association to the various forms of 'subtle abuse' targeted at vulnerable mentally ill people (coercion to borrow money by people "befriending" them, scams, etc.) and look at ways to address, report or ideally avoid it altogether.
The project will see a film-maker work with tenants to make an information DVD documenting and acting out real-life situations in which this abuse has occurred. The idea originally came from those who have suffered this subtle form of abuse and wanted to protect others and prevent re-occurrences by forewarning and empowering them to recognise and deal with abuse.
Those running the project will liaise and link in with local mental health organisations and groups, mental health professionals, PCT's, Local Authorities, as well as carers and relatives, to research what is needed from the DVD and to promote and distribute the end product. NESTA will provide funding of £20,000.
Patient Opinion
The Power of Voice
The brainchild of a GP, this project will take an existing patient feedback service, Patient Opinion, and develop the idea for the mental health sector. The current service allows patients to share the story of their care at acute hospitals and rate the service they receive. Hospitals subscribe to the service as a means of sourcing feedback, engaging in dialogue and, ultimately, driving service improvement.
Working in partnership with an NHS Trust, the new project will develop innovative web-based approaches to enable those using the mental health service to share their experiences online, and feed that back to providers and commissioners, while protecting user privacy and autonomy. NESTA funding of just under £70,000 will help develop a means for ongoing, meaningful and effective involvement from patients and carers, to help shape the services they want. The local project will be a starting point for what is envisaged ultimately to be a nationally-available service.
Traumatic Stress Service, The Maudsley
SLaM & Vauxhall City Farm
This project will use a city farm to provide practical therapy for vulnerable refugees and asylum seekers and help them adjust to life in a new country. The setting is designed to help overcome the difficulty of engaging these, often very traumatised, individuals with the mental health system.
The project has three key aims – to increase the clients' sense of safety, to help them work through their traumatic experiences within the safety of therapy in a non-hospital setting, and to re-connect with everyday life.
It will do this by providing emotional and practical support; offering structure through specific, practical activities; building kinship with people who have had similar experiences; building confidence and self-reliance; and establishing links into the wider community. NESTA will provide funding up to a total £110,000 for two years, including evaluation.