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The Mental Health Improvement Plan in Manchester: Voluntary and community sector engagement

Manchester’s Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCG’s) and Manchester City Council are working together to redesign mental health and wellbeing services with an intention to commission new services from April 2015.

What has happened?
Macc has helped them to co-ordinate their engagement with people who use or might use mental health services and people who act as informal carers. We did this by inviting different voluntary sector organisations, in their role as advocates for communities, to hold a focus group with the people who use their services.

Focus groups
Using CCG funding, Macc recruited five independent facilitators to help plan, facilitate and report on these focus groups. Each focus group looked at different aspects of mental health services and gave feedback on what outcomes and indicators are most important, how services are configured and how services could work together better. Funding was also made available to cover some of the participation costs.

Overall the feedback on the events was very positive – they reached over 250 people from different geographical and thematic communities most of whom would not normally participate in engagement or consultation processes. The main criticism was the tightness of the timescale- given more time groups said they would have reached more people and engaged with the issues better.

Community Reporter training
Macc also ran a Community Reporters course. Participants learnt new skills in telling their stories/experiences through film and became accredited Community Reporters. They produced four films which looked at different aspects and issues in relation to mental health and mental health services. They are now able to continue to document the issues that are important to them and upload them to the Community Reporter website. See one of the films made by Jim from Survivors Manchester:

To watch the other films go to the MyManchester website. 

What now?
The Commissioners are now using the findings to shape a new mental health contract. In March 2014 the CCG boards will discuss and sign a final version of the contract and decide if they will proceed with plans to put the whole of mental health services out to a tendering process.

Local Authority Prevention and Wellbeing Consultation
Using the recovery network which brings together people who use services and informal carers with providers and commissioners, Macc also facilitated an event in partnership with the Local Authority. The event focused on how to develop peer support networks and services for people with mental health needs. It was held at the Friends Meeting House on 6 February 2014 and was attended by 40 people. The key aim was to help think through what good peer networks and support services would look like and what needs to be commissioned to support development of a wide variety of peer support networks and services across the city. A report from the event will be produced shortly.

To find out more about the engagement events or the recovery network event please contact John Butler
To find out more about the Community Reporters course please contact Hannah Powell