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.

Challenges Short term interventions VS Low 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