Feathers in the City of Steel: A co‐operative project in a comprehensive mental health system
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/13619322199700015 |
| Pages | 22-24 |
| Date | 01 June 1998 |
| Published date | 01 June 1998 |
| Author | Paddy Cooney,Katy Malcolm |
| Subject Matter | Health & social care |
22 The Mental Health Review 2:2 ©Pavilion Publishing (Brighton) 1997
1. A new service
This would be a completely new service, rather than
the development or evolution of one of our present
services. Despite the fact that we were in the process
of closing a large psychiatric hospital, therewas no
industrial therapy unit or its like which we could
develop or change for use in the community. This
indeed proved a distinct disadvantage.
2. Affordability
In common with most services, we did not have new
investment monies with which to develop the mental
health strategy, so that any employment project had
to be sustainable in the long term. Although we
anticipated there being joint funding and start-up
monies available for the first two or three years, we
did not envisage new monies becoming available at
the expiration of short-termmonies.
3. Meaningful work
The nature of the work had to be meaningful and
real. This was not to say that it necessarily had to be
waged, but it was not to be the creation of artificial
activities to keep people occupied during the day.
4. Targeting
The project established needed to be able to be
targeted at people with serious and enduring mental
health difficulties. In many ways, this was the most
severe challenge of all. As with so much else in mental
health services, there at times appear to be severe
Paddy Cooney, Director of
Adult Mental Health Services
COMMUNITY HEALTH SHEFFIELD NHS TRUST
Katy Malcolm, Consultant Psychiatrist,
Rehabilitation & Continuing Care
COMMUNITY HEALTH SHEFFIELD NHS TRUST
I
nthe summer of 1994, the Community Health
Sheffield NHS T
rust, in partnership with the health
authority and Sheffield Family and Community
Services, undertook a consultation event to assist the
development of a shared mental health strategy. At the
major stakeholder conference held to identify the needs
of users of mental health services, the two highest
priorities of needs which came through were for an
out-of-hours service and for some form of employment
project within Sheffield. These priorities were by no
means unique to Sheffield and have been a dominant
theme of the majority of stakeholder conferences
initiated by the Centrefor Mental Health Services
Development in the six years of its existence.
Therefore, in developing a strategy, one of our major
concerns has been to develop an employment project
within Sheffield.
In developing such a project, we wereinformed by
anumber of criteria:
Feathers in the City of Steel:
Aco-operative project in a
comprehensive mental health system
FOCUS ON…
T
he approach of an NHS Trust in identifying the components of a comprehensive adult mental health
service, the role of a co-operative approach as one component and the attractions of the Feathers model
as the provider of that component are set out.
ABSTRACT
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