Partnership working
Introduction
This assignment is going to explore inter agency and partnership working between RECOVERY and Cherre Residential Care focusing on the way they work in the community.
RECOVERY is a registered charity for mental health and wellbeing. RECOVERY was set up by survivors of mental health in 2004 . They campaign against compulsion, People being forced on to drugs and instead they help people individually. RECOVERY's mission is to spread the word that people can recover from Mental Health problems and to encourage capacity. RECOVERY is a user led service so many volunteers are survivors that have recovered from Mental Health problems. RECOVERY also campaigns against compulsion. They believe they are a lot of therapies that can help person with mental health problems such as art, jewellery making, creative writing, poetry, music and coping skills without forcing patients on medication instead they have a right of choice RECOVERY encourage people to talk about their experiences with mental health, we teach centering therapy and creative therapy, we blog, we learn and we try to remove the stigma.
We go into the community and hospitals to act as advocates for and support people suffering from wellbeing issues. . RICAPP project reaches out into the community. It provides social inclusion and support with trained RECOVERY Support Workers for those in need. RICAPP’s (RECOVERY Independent Community Advocacy Personalisation Project) aim is to empower people to have capacity to choose the best outcomes for their Mental Health recovery RICAPP’s objectives are to visit survivors at their residence to enable their views and needs to be listened to and acted upon. RICAPP is limited to self-referral so allowing clients to be responsible for their own choice of action. RICAPP’s scope includes Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland. RICAPP Advocates support clients in hospital and in the community with active listening, centring prayer and knowledge of complementary and alternative remedies so encouraging clients to choose their own targets and goals. RICAPP will stay independent from Cherre Residential Care. However we will endeavour to have a Service Level Agreement with them so that the service provided is in line with RECOVERY's ethos. RICAPP recognises that to be free from discrimination clients need freedom from compulsion. Independent mental health advocates like RECOVERY are able to visit “qualifying patients”, who include those liable to be detained, subject to guardianship, or community patients. The appropriate national authority (the UK government in England the Welsh Assembly in Wales) is responsible for providing this service. Maitland,L. (2008)
Cherrie residential care
Cherrie residential was established to provide high quality support to the people who use their services. They aim to enable independent and dignified lives of people suffering and recovering to mental health and living with learning disabilities, To ensure that they are not just in the community but are part of the community. By being part of the community they mean that their clients should have happy and fulfilled lives which have all the rights, obligations, aspirations and benefits of the wider community, Cherrie residential aims and objectives are to maximise personal choice and personal decision making as the right of all service users, To uphold the human and citizens rights of all whom are supported, To treat people who work for or who are supported by Cherrie residential care and all visitors with the dignity and respect at all times. Respect and enable the right of all clients to maximise their independence through supporting them to develop or maintain life skills. Recognise the uniqueness and diversity of each person as an individual and to value the contribution that they make. Recognise and respect the individuals need for privacy at all times and to maintain the confidentiality of all information relating to them. Reduce social isolation and enable the people we support to establish and maintain meaningful relationships. Recognising the individual need for personal fulfilment, to offer individualised programmes or meaningful activities and benefits of community living by broadening their opportunities for a range of social, educational, vocational and recreational/ leisure experiences. Enhancing each individual's quality of life through supporting community integration, presence and social inclusion. Providing support in an individualised way by skilled and experienced staff so that the risk of admissions to residential care or hospital is reduced for each individual.
According to Atkinson,M (2002) “Interagency working is about making sure that people are regularly talking about their work, understanding each others’ roles and sharing with other agencies and service users. It is about working together towards commonly agreed aims and objectives” (a practitioner). Cherrie residential care always work effectively with all partners and stakeholders including their clients, their carers or representatives and other professional agencies and organisations involved with the service users. The main purpose in working with partners is making an individualised service planning for their clients. Individualised planning is a service led, person centred approach on the client's needs. Cherrie residential care work with other agencies that are involved with the client with a focus on the client's strengths, needs, aspirations, interests and preferences. Self determination is emphasised throughout the assessment process, A personalised service plan is developed with the active involvement of the clients type of support, services and activities most appropriate for their current needs, abilities, preferences, goals and aspirations are chosen with an emphasis on utilisation of mainstream community resources and settings. Al psychiatric, behavioural, or other risks are carefully assessed and appropriate risk management plans are incorporated into the service plan. This is done with the involvement of clients, relatives, advocates and professional agencies like psychiatrist and community nurses. The core value is the right of clients to be decision makers and be able to identify the type of support and services they wish to have. Cherrie residential care believes it has a responsibility to remain accountable to all constituencies, including clients, relatives/ carers, staff, other providers and the community at large. Accountability to individuals and relatives is ensured through their active involvement in the assessment of need and in the planning and monitoring and evaluation of services. Their involvement in monitoring and evaluation is ensured in multiple ways including but not limited to, regular case reviews meetings , advisory group meetings, satisfaction surveys and quality of life surveys. Cherrie residential operate their care services in full compliances with all applicable statues and regulations for example the Health and social Care Act ( 2008), Regulated Activities Regulations (2010), Mental capacity Act (2005) including the Deprivation of Liberty Safeguards that arose from this act. Interagency working is widely promoted as being a more effective and cost-effective way of working with families. Perceived benefits range from families having quicker access to services and better relationships with services to professionals experiencing higher job satisfaction. However, it is important to acknowledge that interagency working can be problematic (Webb and Vulliamy, 2001) and difficult to achieve RICAPP believes clients should be empowered by advocates to have a voice. Advocates encourage Cherre Residential Care to enable clients to have capacity (ie to know what is best for them).Advocates should be non-judgemental, respectful of peoples’ aspirations to achieve and attain their own desired outcomes. RICAPP is an advocacy scheme encouraging self-advocacy. We believe that survivors need to have an understanding of their own route to recovery before they can empower others. This empowerment gives clients’ choices about how and who will treat (NHS services/CAR Complementary and Alternative Remedies. RICAPP empowers clients to become involved and influence the advocacy scheme by being part of its management committee. RICAPP working in partnership with Cherre Residential have an equal opportunities policy, a safeguarding adults’ policy and a conflict of interest’s policy that is pro-active in upholding diversity, equality and social inclusion. RICAPP empowers survivors to work when and how often they choose. RICAPP bears in mind that the volunteers are free to drop in, attend meetings, sessions and training according to their requirements. RICAPP advocates’ time is agreed in advance and a fair working timetable is drawn up RICAPP and Cherre Residential recognises the need for an effective monitoring system and evaluation of its work. RICAPP’s advocates and clients have the opportunity to fill in evaluation sheets about visits, social events and the work of the charity. RICAPP will allocate a named advocate to each clients and a means of contacting him or her. Atkinson et al (2002) in their detailed study of 30 interagency initiatives outlined five different models: Decision making groups – provide a forum for different agencies to meet and make decisions Consultation and training – professionals from one agency provide consultation and/or training in order to enhance the skills and knowledge of another agency Centre-based delivery – gathering professional expertise in one place in order to deliver a much more coordinated and comprehensive service. Coordinated delivery – this is similar to centre-based delivery but with a coordinator to pull together previously disparate services . Operational-team delivery – professionals from different agencies work together on a day by day basis to form a cohesive multi agency team delivering services directly to the client.Many professionals report high levels of satisfaction with interagency working especially those with backgrounds working in single, traditional agencies. They tend to find the work stimulating and they have opportunities to be creative in their ways of working (Fitzgerald, 2004). For interagency working to be successful there needs to be a common vision shared by everyone who is a part of the team (Atkinson et al, 2002; Frost, 2005; Noaks et al, 2004). A common vision is a ‘unifying factor’ and provides a fixed point for the team which it can return to when there are difficulties or points of disagreement. A common vision will also change 22 over time as the team develops and negotiates positive and negative times (DfES, 2006b). RECOVERY Independent Community Advocacy Project supports clients in the community helping them to develop coping strategies for housing, social, budgeting needs. We employ a Mental Health Support Leader to lead this Independent Advocacy project. This involves visiting survivors in the community who are unable to come into the studio to enable them to find the motivation to join in with RECOVERY's activities. Also the Support Leader leads a team of volunteers who helps clients to be pro-active about their recovery by supporting them with cleaning, shopping, budgeting, cooking and socialising. We have direct budgets for the survivors to pay support workers to do these activities.
RECOVERY and Cherre Residential care provide preventative support to promote wellbeing. They are user led service so many of our volunteers are clients that have recovered from Mental Health problems. So they know what has helped them and so they can help others. Just being a friend with listening skills who visits regularly can help to improve wellbeing. Also being proactive about the living environment can help to improve attitudes. Planning a person's recovery and doing spirit CBTʼ. (Warmington et al, 2004: 48). “Perpetuates the notion of interagency working as a virtuous solution to ‘joined up’ social problems and to under-acknowledge interagency working as a site of tensions and contradictions”. conclusion
Nevertheless I believe that RECOVERY and Cherre Residential care should ensure that advocates are prepared, trained and supported in their roles. They should be provided with opportunities to develop their skills and experiences to be able to help their clients effectively and be able to work in the communities and become more inclusive partners.

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References
Atkinson,M; Wilkin,A;Stoff,A; Doherty,P and Kinder, K, multi Agency Working, A Detailed Study. LGA Research Report 26 (2002)
Atkinson, M., Doherty, P and Kinder, K. (2005) Multi-agency working: models, challenges and key factors for success. Journal of Early Childhood Research http://ecr.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/3/1/7
Noaks, L; Moreton, K and Williamson, H. (2004) On Track ThematicReport:Partnership Working. Research Brief 527. www.dfes.gov.uk/research
Warmington, P., Daniels, H., Edwards, A., Brown, S., Leadbetter, J., Martin, D and Middleton, D. (2004) TLRPIII Learning in and for interagency working Interagency Collaboration: a review of the literature. University of Bath:Learning in and for Interagency Working Project Webb, R and Vulliamy,G. (2001) Joining Up the Solutions: the Rhetoric and Practice of Interagency Cooperation. Children & Society, Vol.15 pp. 315-
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Maitland,L. (2008). RICAPP. Available: http://www.recovery4wellbeing.org/#!untitled/sitepage_21. Last accessed 4th March 2014