Organisation Name: Together for Mental Wellbeing; Contact name: Elina Stamou Job title: Peer Support Development Manager Email: elina-stamou@together-uk.org Telephone contact: 0207 780 7358
Let's Work Together is a user led and peer support based programme that brings together a range of
training opportunities, service
user involvement, volunteering opportunities and peer support that in service users' words is what
sets Together apart from other organisations as "Together really do it in a
meaningful way".
Key components of the
programme:
Rewarding
opportunities; doing something meaningful and genuinely useful. This includes a
range of training and volunteering roles.
Real Experience; peer support
Taking Control; supporting people to be in control of their own life, having confidence and building skills.
Working Alongside; user led programme
Let's Work Together was developed organically by service users and Together's Service User Involvement Directorate (SUID). It has been instrumental in delivering and supporting peer support projects within Together and externally with user led partner organisations.
In a range of formal and informal settings, with paid and voluntary peer support roles in place, peers support peers in a range of areas such as leading their own care, progressing towards independent living, using self management tools, accessing and delivering training, managing finances and personal budgets, contributing to Together's policy and practice, engaging with local mental health services, making presentations at conferences and to Commissioners on a range of issues (including personalisation).
What have been the benefits for individual service users (and others) accessing your project?
It has increased the mental wellbeing of people with lived experience of mental health problems by;
- raising aspirations; inspiration and motivation to start and progress in their journey towards improved mental wellbeing; developing self-confidence and purpose; gaining new skills. Also feeling more stable, in control and able to take each day as it comes, feeling less isolated and better understood.
- improved relationships and develop/expand social/support networks and become active in the community
- access to training and volunteering with the potential to progress towards employment
- able to exercise more choice and control - leading one's own mental wellbeing journey
- reduced dependence on mental health services
- able to provide and receive peer support - with positive peer role models who demonstrate the capacity for recovery
Are you considering any future developments in response to the ‘Personalisation' agenda?
The Let's Work Together peer support model is an example of good practice in service user leadership and personalisation - it is:
- based on the principle that everyone can lead positive lives
- places experts by experience at its centre & supports service users' journey to mental wellbeing
- developed by service users & Together in 2004 and in their words: "[it is] what sets Together apart from other organisations, Together really do it in a meaningful way".
- provides choice and control in the mental wellbeing journey
- supports independent living, self directed support and involves a varied portfolio of services
- it is also about co-production & cultural change
We will continue to develop, deliver and support services based on this model; services that meet the range of dimensions involved in the personalisation agenda. We are also currently undertaking a transformation process for three of our services towards a user led peer brokerage service, a co-production model service and a peer support based service.