Authors: Kate Thynne, Helen Fenner, Peter Hall, Jacinda Ryan, Seraphim Jovanov, Douglas Holmes, Lynda Hennessy
Year: 2022
Event: 2022 TheMHS Conference
Subject: lived experience, recovery, services
Type of resource: Conference Presentations and Papers
Abstract: PANEL PRESENTATION: Flourishing Lives by strengthening individuals & community using a Recovery approach and Integrated Services
Kate Thynne, Helen Fenner
Flourish Australia adopts a recovery approach and integrated services to support people with a lived experience of a mental health issue. The Recovery Action Framework promotes three vital behaviours in the workplace including strength-based language, recovery conversations and reflective practice.
The integration of programs provides a holistic approach to mental health by supporting people to access: housing, employment, friendships, health and special interests.
Flourish programs include: outreach; a recreational day centre; community housing accommodation services; assisted hospital discharge; skills & employment. In this way, people can utilise a range of services to ensure their individual and social needs are met.
The Recovery Action Plan and integrated services allow people to experience a real difference in mental health outcomes. Flourish empowers people by supporting them to identify their own goals and invites them to be a part of their own recovery through participation every step of the way. This is evaluated by the people who use the service and documented regularly in annual reports. By sharing personal stories, people let us know how their lives have flourished being part of this unique community.
PANEL PRESENTATION: Positive Psychology and Learned Helplessness - Balancing a Career whilst Navigating the Mental Health System
Peter Hall
In recent years Mental Health has become openly discussed in the mainstream. However, when navigating complexity within the Mental Health system the author contends that there are long held assumptions and expectations that determine the role a Consumer plays within the system. The author argues that a hierarchy of mental illnesses does indeed exist, leaving the belief that negative and prejudiced stigma continues to be more pronounced for those living with psychosis.
It is argued that due to societal attitudes, the label of “psychotic” or “schizophrenic” determines that individuals with these diagnosis are often not seen as active participants in either the broader community or workforce, or both. The result of this is that the system of consumer choice is being overshadowed by a power differential effectively determining that they are a passive consumer of services in the system rather than an active participant, including in the workforce.
The author will approach this through his own lived experience as both a Consumer and professional within Mental Health services and will explore how presumptions of social standing shape professional/client interactions and the structure of the system. Furthermore, the author argues that models such as positive psychology (Seligman, Csikszentmihalyi 2000) and the concept of “Recovery” are proposed as ways to counter “Learned helplessness” (Maier, Seligman 2016) with this theory informing the discussion.
PANEL PRESENTATION: Bridging Complexities: Advocating for the Emergence of Peer Clinicians
Jacinda Ryan
An ever-changing climatic shift, the COVID-19 pandemic has cataclysmically exposed the indiscriminate nature of mental health crises. As Australians sat transfixed by the daily barrage of statistics, a plethora of unprecedented media images emerged of a devastated, vulnerable and profoundly human clinical workforce.
Proactive measures such as The Hand-n-Hand initiative (http://www.handnhand.org.au) and The Pandemic Kindness Movement (http://aci.health.nsw.gov.au/covid-19/kindness) proffered the refreshing adoption by clinicians of peer principles, familiar and skillfully utilised in routine practice by their interdisciplinary lived experience counterparts.
In the wake of this empowering affirmation of shared humanity, and terms such as recovery-oriented practice, person-centred, and trauma-informed becoming embedded as the renewed vocabulary of nation-wide mental health-care; complex challenges continue to arise within the domains of clinical implementation.
As a long-time consumer, passionate lived experience worker and fledgling clinician, the time has never resonated more pertinently to consider innovative ways to introduce lived experience expertise into clinical practice.
In a comparative analysis of the pandemic initiatives and current methodologies of the lived experience workforce, this presentation aims to advocate for the emergence of the Peer Clinician as a modality of deconstructing the hierarchy, and offering a bridge where consumers and clinicians can meet equitably in the middle.
PANEL PRESENTATION: From helper oriented models to a coaching practice, a new paradigm for recovery and wellbeing
Seraphim Jovanov
As the mental health sector over the last ten years has been embracing the notion of recovery, hence traditional modalities of counselling, support work, case management and clinical approaches have had their own limitations in fully embracing the principles and the new framework of operation. The consumer being the ultimate driver in the process is the key to this practice whilst worker is a facilitative resource. The shift to recovery-oriented practice in mental health has meant a power shift towards the consumer, while traditional modalities are closely related to the notions of client and patient relationship, implying limited power and choices in terms of self-directed engagement for the consumer. Thus, recovery-oriented coaching modality has arisen because of a different type of relationship needed to be fostered for recovery. A specific coaching recovery model has been developed based on the recovery-oriented principles and practices. The role of the professional differs in terms of attributes, skills, knowledge areas and processes in comparison to the traditional discourses. It coaches the participant and their network towards recovery outcomes and navigating the complex social, mainstream and health services. The presentation will explore coaching as the new paradigm of recovery-oriented work.
PANEL PRESENTATION: What is SUPER CRO?
Douglas Holmes, Lynda Hennessy
SUPER CRO is an acronym for Service Users, Participating, Educating, and Researching Consumer Run Organisations.
The idea for SUPER CRO started at St Vincents Hospital, Sydney in 2010 when consumers who were attending the SUPER Group started talking about the different ways they could be involved.
The model we are using is based on Consumer Run Organisations from the USA. We first witnessed this model as part of a visit to Kansas in 2010 to attend the Recovery Conference in Wichita and were invited to visit Project Independence that had been operating successfully for 21 years. We were so impressed that we made the decision to bring the model to Australia.
During the presentation the audience will gain an understanding about the many steps involved in developing an organisation entirely run by Mental Health Consumers from different states across Australia.
We have Navigated many Complexities during this process including: being accepted by the Australian Commision on not for profit Charities (ACNC) as a Charity. More information can be found on the ACNC website at this Url https://www.acnc.gov.au/charity/charities/f1a6b167-276f-e911-a981-000d3ad02a61/profile
We have a functioning website www.supercro.com
This resource is only available for subscribers. If you have a subscription, please log in. Otherwise, click here to purchase a subscription.