Search results

The purpose of this paper is to consider the process of working with a Lived Experience Advisory Group (LEAP) and its outcomes in REFOCUS, a large five-year programme of recovery research.

Narrative reflections on the experience of working with LEAP were collected from five members and the chair of LEAP, two REFOCUS researchers and the principal investigator. These were synthesised to show both the process and outcomes of LEAP involvement in REFOCUS, and how involvement evolved organically over time.

Individual reflective accounts showed how working with LEAP impacted (to a greater or lesser extent) on each individual involved in the process, providing new insights and influencing, to varying degrees, the way in which they then worked with LEAP. Synthesis of the reflections showed how these changes impacted organically on LEAP’s process of involvement, with a shift in LEAP’s role from being purely consultative/advisory towards one which was much more about co-production, with LEAP pro-actively contributing to some aspects of REFOCUS in the later stages of the study.

The authors stress the importance of considering process as well as outcomes in patient and public involvement, and make practical recommendations for improving both in future programmes of research.

This is the first empirical evaluation of user and carer involvement and its development during a large recovery research programme.

This paper aims to build on the Sainsbury Centre for Mental Health (now Centre for Mental Health) workshops by focusing on the recovery of family and friends in particular.

There are already policy supports for the well being of family and friends but at present, their recovery has been overshadowed by the recovery of people who use services. Taking hope, agency and opportunity as key recovery tenets, we use life story work (LSW) to explore this gap and further a relational approach between people who give care, people who use services and people who provide them.

The loop between existing policy and recovery oriented practice should be closed, suggesting LSW as a training platform to consider the humanity of family and friends as of equal worth to people who use services and people who provide them.

The authors argue that without equal consideration and support, family and friends are at risk of becoming hopeless as their sense of agency and access to opportunities diminish. LSW with family and friends paints a consistently worrying picture of the quality of engagement with services which are not sufficiently resourced to offer an integrated approach to recovery. Without such an approach, however, the effectiveness of recovery‐oriented practice may be compromised by the creation of new cycles of hopelessness.

The integration of peer support workers with lived experience of mental health problems into existing mental health services has been found beneficial in some ways. However, some peer support workers have experienced unique challenges in terms of role confusion and limited opportunities for networking and support. Qualitative research and evaluation regarding peer support worker integration is limited. This paper aims to address this issue.

The current paper presents a qualitative evaluation of the experiences of two peer support specialist (PSS) workers and their managers within one UK mental health trust. The PSS workers and managers were interviewed individually using a semi‐structured format. Thematic analysis was applied to the interview transcripts.

In agreement with prior research and evaluation, positive experiences and challenges were identified in relation to PSS employment, both for PSS workers and their teams. Overarching themes concern the PSS worker as “other”, the PSS worker as a “change agent”, and “readiness for PSS worker employment”.

The evaluation is limited by the small sample size but the findings could be used to inform the integration of PSS workers into other existing services. This evaluation begins to untangle some of the tensions around the integration process. Strategies to support PSS integration based on the recommendations of participants and the findings of the current evaluation are presented.

Peer support is increasingly being introduced into mainstream mental health services internationally. The distinctiveness of peer support, compared to other mental health support, has been linked to values underpinning peer support. Evidence suggests that there are challenges to maintaining those values in the context of highly standardised organisational environments. The purpose of this paper is to describe a “principles-based” approach to developing and evaluating a new peer worker role in mental health services.

A set of peer support values was generated through systematic review of research about one-to-one peer support, and a second set produced by a UK National Expert Panel of people sharing, leading or researching peer support from a lived experience perspective. Value sets were integrated by the research team – including researchers working from a lived experience perspective – to produce a principles framework for developing and evaluating new peer worker roles.

Five principles referred in detail to: relationships based on shared lived experience; reciprocity and mutuality; validating experiential knowledge; leadership, choice and control; discovering strengths and making connections. Supporting the diversity of lived experience that people bring to peer support applied across principles.

The principles framework underpinned development of a handbook for a new peer worker role, and informed a fidelity index designed to measure the extent to which peer support values are maintained in practice. Given the diversity of peer support, the authors caution against prescriptive frameworks that might “codify” peer support and note that lived experience should be central to shaping and leading evaluation of peer support.

This paper adds to the literature on peer support in mental health by describing a systematic approach to understanding how principles and values underpin peer worker roles in the context of mental health services. This paper informs an innovative, principles-based approach to developing a handbook and fidelity index for a randomised controlled trial. Lived experiences of mental distress brought to the research by members of the research team and the expert advisors shaped the way this research was undertaken.

As becoming a mother becomes increasingly embedded in the marketplace, this paper explores how a group of low-income pregnant and newly parenting young mothers engaged with expansive markets for the new mother and baby.

This paper draws on an extended period of fieldwork carried out at a Pupil Referral Unit and a Mother and Baby Unit in the city of Bristol, UK. The research took a staged and incremental approach, incorporating aspects of participant observation, activity-based focus groups and a photo elicitation exercise.

This paper highlights the anxiety the young women experienced around their ability (or lack thereof) to participate in practices of childrearing consumption and details how the young women strived to provide well for their children despite their limited incomes, developing a sophisticated knowledge of markets and adopting a range of budgeting and smart shopping strategies to ensure they could acquire the “stuff” their children “needed”.

Contrary to popular discourse, the young women emerge as careful and pragmatic consumers who plan and manage their finances carefully, and the paper acknowledges skills that are often missing from accounts of young mothers and working-class people more broadly.

The purpose of this paper is to explore social studies from the moral perspective of an ethic of care. Care ethics considers not only the cognitive skills but also the affective dimensions of educative experiences for how they might forward an ethical ideal of caring.

This case study was conducted in a second-grade classroom at a small, diverse, urban, independent K-8th grade elementary school. Data were gathered from six sources: notes from the participating second-grade teacher’s planning meetings over the course of a two and a half month unit of instruction about genealogy; lesson plans and observation notes; interviews of participating teachers; interviews with participating students; surveys of students; and the second-grade teacher’s reflective journal. The authors took a phenomenological approach to data analysis, examining the entire data set and conducting inductive interpretive coding to identify emergent themes.

The authors found that adopting the theoretical perspective of care ethics helped a novice elementary teacher revise his/her approach to social studies instruction. Care ethics led to the teacher coming to see himself/herself as a teacher of care ethics, focusing on dialogue over stories to teach caring in diverse contexts, and highlighting social aspects of the curriculum. The students’ descriptions of their learning indicate that they perceived a larger purpose for their social studies lessons – in this case, participation in social life – and that this perception contributed to their engagement.

The study was conducted at one school site where the teachers enjoyed the intellectual freedom to infuse new perspectives such as care ethics into their curriculum. More research needs to be done to explore the feasibility of application of these ideas elsewhere.

Implications include how adopting an ethic of care provides a larger purpose for social studies that may deepen the educative experience, both for the teacher and for the students. Adopting an ethic of care in social studies might help cultivate students’ inclination to act in more caring ways toward one another.

This paper addresses the overlooked ethical purposes of teaching social studies from a care ethics perspective.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the process of using a co-production partnership approach in the development of a Recovery College pilot.

This is a case study of the co-production process, using action research to learn from ongoing reflection, mid-project review and feedback questionnaires.

The partnership process is an integral and valued aspect of the Recovery College. Challenges include different organisational cultures and processes and the additional time required. Mutual respect, appreciation of different expertise, communication, a shared vision and development plan have been key to success. The paper focused on governance and fidelity; recruitment and training; curriculum development and evaluation. People are enthusiastic and motivated. Co-production and equal partnership are a valuable approach to developing a Recovery College.

At present many regions are developing Recovery Colleges. This paper describes one approach and shows that co-production is valuable to the process of developing a Recovery College.