Buddy Scheme (Kent and Medway NHS Social Care Partnership)
Organisation: Kent and Medway NHS Social Care Partnership
Funding: £40,000
This project will 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 will pay for two part-time posts – one for a mental health practitioner and the other for a service user. The two posts will work together to co-ordinate student practice placements, and 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.