Who are Together?

• National Mental Health Charity

• Objective: to work alongside people to support them on their journey towards independence

• Advocacy, Residential Care, Criminal Justice & Community Support

– Community Support + Personalisation = Your Way

What is independence?

• Away from paid support

• Improvement to Wellbeing

• Building of resilience

• Managing health condition/coping

What is Your Way?

• Personalised Community Support

• Choice and control

• Goal focussed so it has to be flexible

• Working alongside people towards independence

• Building hope, esteem & confidence

How did Your Way come about?

• Wandsworth Day Centre Transformation

• Personalisation agenda

• Need to reduce costs

• Increase impact/improve outcomes

The 5 Essential Elements

• Open Approach & Excellent Customer Service

• Meaningful Personalisation

• Peer Support

• Service User Leadership

• Healthy Living in the Community

What does it look like to get support from Your Way?

• We - Listen, Ask, Engage• You - Lead your support• Goals - Milestones• Flexible and creative approach - Blank piece of paper - We come to you – community venues - Technology like smart phones and laptops

Aims of Evaluation

To examine whether support from Your Way led to:

• Increased mental wellbeing

• Increased health-promoting lifestyle activity

• The achievement of self-directed goals

• Improved service–user experiences.

• Cost comparison

Methodology

MHF – DOH Mixed Methods• Quantitative– Baseline, 3 months, 6 months, 12 months– WEMWBS, Health-Promoting Lifestyle Profile II

(HPLP II), Goal Attainment Scaling (GAS) (7). • Qualitative

- Baseline & 12 months- Semi-structured, peer interviewers

Numbers

• 13 Your Way Services

• Over 300 people – Quantitative

• 40 people - Qualitative

Demographics

• The average age of participants was 48 years (range 17-84)

• Just over half (51%) were male

• Nearly 90% were from a white British background

• Most frequently reported diagnostics categories were

depression (25%) and schizophrenia and psychosis (24%)

• Just under half (47%, n=129/275) reported that they had a

physical disability

Findings

• Wellbeing - There were statistically significant increases in wellbeing

in the first three months of service use for people who enrolled on

the evaluation within a month of accessing support from Your Way

• Lifestyle - There were statistically significant improvements in

relation to social life and relationships, a sense of meaning, dealing

with health professionals, and health-promoting lifestyle activity for

people who enrolled on the evaluation within a month of accessing

Your Way.

Conclusions

• Important findings in relation to wellbeing, health promoting lifestyle activity and goal attainment.

• Participants were positive about Your Way and felt understood by staff; and some were able to reduce their contact with statutory services with support from Your Way.

• Cost comparisons between Your Way and other services appear to suggest some cost benefits if Your Way works on a large-scale basis or is provided as part of a broader range of services rather than in isolation.

• Further work is needed to better understand how innovative, community-based support services can help support people with mental health problems and which groups benefit most.

ChallengesShort term interventions

VSLow referral rates

• Change to eligibility criteria • Low roll out of Personal Budgets• Contractual limitations• Hearts and minds

What have we learnt?

• Collation of right sort of data • Continual evaluation and review• Reflection on aims and objectives of services• Embedding personalisation takes time and requires

the above• Looking at physical health & wellbeing as a whole –

‘integration’• People hate forms

QUESTIONS