Latest News
Delivering a series of workshops in Birmingam for NCB in early November.
Over the last couple of weeks I have been doing some work for a conference on the forthcoming child health strategy.
I have been busy travelling around the UK during most of September and early October - working on various projects and workshops - visiting Gloucester, Barking & Dagenham, London, Essex and Birmingham along the way.
Achieved the PTLLS award (teaching in lifelong learning - City & Guilds level four) this month. Award ceremony held at the Dali Universe museum in London.
Doing work for Participation Works in Brighton.
Working for the National Children's Bureau on a variety of projects in Sandwell & Dudley, Chelmsford and London in September.
I am doing some work for Thurrock Council in August to help develop their community engagement plans.
We had over 20 young people work with us at Bexley Care Trust over July and August to promote young peoples involvement in commissioning.
I am supporting the National Centre for Involvement at the University of Warwich with their research in public engagement activities.
The PEAL roadshow starts again up again in late June with some work with the local authority in Oxford.
I have been commissioned to write a guide to participation and commissioning over August.
In June I am doing some consultancy work for the communication charity Afasic
I am busy starting work on the new PTTLS (Preparing to Teach in Lifelong Learning) Award - this will contribute to my continuous professional development.
In May I will be working with the Pre-School Learning Alliance as a City & Guilds Assessor. This is a new area for me so I will be learning as I go along. I will provide mentoring and assessment to 11 experienced practitioners.
I will be speaking at a conference in April on early years and the potential of information and computer technology. This is an area I am passionate about and it will be interesting to learn from the other presenters and participants. The conference is organised the the British Association for Early Childhood Education and is part of their IBM Kidsmart programme.
Between April and July I am delivering a series of 12 participation workshops for Ormiston Children & Families Trust. There are 2 types of workshop - level 1 is an introduction to participation whilst level 2 looks in more depth at key areas such as involvement in governance, evaluation and establishing effective forums.
I have been busy writing various case studies and practice examples for the PEAL project. It is good to have the opportunity to do this piece of work - it captures all the learning and all the wonderful innovations that PEAL has been part of over the last 2 years. It is also nice to be office based for a few days given my busy schedule recently.
As part of my work with Thurrock Council I will be facilitating several public engagement events in Grays and North Stifford for members of the local community.
I am trialling a new course in April titled Using Social Networking and Social Media for Advocacy and Campaigning. The course explores ways that user groups and local communities can use services such as Twitter and Flickr to get their message across and influence change.
I am currently working for the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents (RoSPA) to support them with their participation strategy. This work has been fascinating and highlighted the impact of accidents and safety issues on peoples' lives - from young children to older people. My work has included consultancy advice, mapping and workshops.
March has been my busiest month ever. I have been working for a number of organisations all over the country and working 6 day weeks. It has been an interesting time. My work has taken me from Plymouth in the south to Carlisle near Hadrian's Wall.
I have spent late February and early March working in Bournemouth and Poole with the local councils, their overview and scrutiny committees, the health and social care providers and most importantly local patients and service users to run a series of participatory workshops on how local people can have a stronger voice. The workshops were very successful with lots of creative ideas and proposals for the implementation of LINks (Local Involvement Networks) in April.
Each February is the time my social enterprise Mental Health International Development Ltd. finalises our trading surplus for the year and uses this to make grants to service user led mental health projects around the world. This year we will be making grants to projects in India, Kyrgyzstan and Romania. The social enterprise model works well in this instance enabling the organisation to re-allocate monies earned from work in the UK and invest in grassroots projects overseas. MHID's website is www.mhid.uk.net
I am starting to publish a few of the tools I regularly use in my work. Here is my participation planning tool for thinking about how to run an event or workshop. It is designed to help groups of people thinking about the key questions and issues when putting an event together. Important issues such as access and diversity are highlighted as well as some of the things that need to go on behind the scenes to make participants feel welcome and valued. Click here to download the Event Planing Tool.
I am a featured trainer on the National Children's Bureau PEAL website - click here to read my interview
My work for the Centre for Public Scrutiny intensifies this January and February when I will be working as an Expert Advisor with Local Authorities in Thurrock, Bournemouth and Poole to develop their Local Involvement Networks.
I am delivering a series of three lectures at the University of Greenwich later this January covering user involvement, LINks and public participation in health and leadership.
I have started some new consultancy work with the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents to support them develop their participation and involvement strategies.
Between January and March 2008 I will be working for the National Children's Bureau across the UK. I will be involved in a variety of workshops as a trainer and as lead trainer in places as diverse as Plymouth, Manchester, Basildon and Southampton.The 23rd November 2007 was the 18th anniversary of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. To celebrate the day there was a series of 'takeover' events across the UK organised in partnership with the Children's Commissioner and 11 Million. I participated along with colleagues at Bexley Care Trust and was taken over as a Non-Executive Director for the day by young people from a local school. It was an exciting event and the young people used their time to audit and advise on ways to develop participation in NHS services. A full report and action plan is due to be published in the new year.
Throughout October and November I am working with Ormiston Children & Families Trust to deliver a diversity and equality package in a variety of settings across the East of England including HM Prisons in Norwich, Bedford and Griston. The work explores how organisations can engage with the full range of diverse groups in the local community and build positive relationships.
During September and October I am delivering a series of parental engagement workshops as part of the PEAL programme for the National Day Nurseries Association (NDNA), the National Child Minders Association (NCMA) and the Pre-school Learning Alliance (PLA). It is interesting to explore how the principles of engagement and involvement adapt to a variety of different children's services and settings. I continue to also work with children centres across the UK too and will be working with local authorities in Leeds, Birmingham and Croydon in the coming months.
The Centre for Public Scrutiny (www.cfps.org.uk) has invited me to join their consultants team as an Expert Advisor in the area of health. This will be a fascinating opportunity to support the development of Local Involvement Networks (LINks) and the role of scrutiny in local government and in the community.
I have been asked to chair the Bexley Public Involvement Partnership Group which is part of a borough wide strategic partnership involving the local authority, NHS provider and commissioning Trusts and the voluntary sector. The purpose of the group is to coordinate patient and public involvement across all the agencies. The next meeting is scheduled for August.
The second training for trainers workshop for the National Children's Bureau was a great success. We worked with 21 experienced trainers from all over the UK to cascade the PEAL (Parents, Early Years and Learning) model to children's centres across the country.
I participated in the board leadership programme delivered by the Appointments Commission this July. It included an interesting two-day workshop covering strategic leadership, governance and ensuring that health organisations are 'fit for purpose'.
In early July I will be part of a team editing a Participation Works Mini Guide on involving children and young people in recruitment and selection. This eight-page guide will capture best practice and provide a practical framework for organisations. It will be available freely from the Participation Works website in the autumn (www.participationworks.org.uk). The guide is part of a series of 15 publications promoting participation.
I am currently in the process of reviewing communication and user involvement strategies in Bexley and exploring ways to promote positive messages and images of people using the Care Trust’s services. Part of this work includes finding ways to communicate the shift in activities from provider services to a commissioning function in clear language.
As of late June I have been working in Brighton with children centre managers and staff across the south of England as part of the PEAL programme.
This June I have a new article published in the Community Mental Health Journal titled What Contribution Can Ordinary People Make To The Development Of National Mental Health Policies? The article looks at grassroots approaches to national policy development and the models of community engagement.
During May 2007 I will be working to deliver a training for trainers project for the National Children's Bureau. This will support the development of new trainers on the Early Learning Partnerships (ELP) programme.
From May 2007 I have been appointed as a Associate Trainer / Consultant for Participation Works (www.participationworks.org.uk). Participation Works is a three year contract to support and work with third sector organisations, and the young people's sector generally, to help them fully involve young people in their work, promoting a culture of participation among all the services that affect young people. The work will involve supporting voluntary or community organisations and social enterprises which work with young people aged between 10 and 25 years. The overall contract has been awarded to the Participation Works Consortium which consists of Save the Children, the British Youth Council, the Children's Rights Alliance for England (CRAE), the National Children's Bureau (NCB), the National Youth Agency (NYA) and the National Council for Voluntary Youth Services (NCVYS).
My Leadership and Social Work 2-day workshop for the University of Greenwich in late April 2007 was a success and I have also progressed my participatory research project on leadership in social care. This research will be written up and published later this year - further news will be posted on the website soon.
On Thursday 5th April I traveled to Middlesbrough to continue my work with the service
user led mental health policy action group MenQual. I worked closely with the co-chairs of the group providing mentoring and support. The co-chairs both share expertise of using services and provide direction to MenQual. During the visit I facilitated part of the meeting and worked with members to develop their local strategy to influence policy and practice. The group also involves many local stakeholders and professionals and has the active participation and support of the Tees, Esk and Wear Valleys NHS Trust.
As part of my work for the Hammersmith Refugee Advice and Support Centre I ran a workshop on advocacy skills for young refugees in April 2007. The training explored topics such as assertiveness, having a voice and ways to get your message across. Participants shared their stories about the challenges of integrating into local communities and their desire to build their skills to create respectful relationships with the local population. The group identified barriers including issues of language, discrimination, prejudice and racism. We then looked at strategies to address these problems including ways to form a self-help group. Members of the group provided feedback that they find participatory facilitation methods most useful to their learning and that they enjoy using role-play, mime and mapping to explore issues. One of the strengths of these tools is that they are less language dependent than group discussion and lectures.
I am delighted to announce that I have just been appointed Non-Executive Director of Bexley NHS Care Trust from April 2007. This part-time role will enable me to work at the governance level of a large and complex NHS organisation to help lead primary health care and adult social care in the London borough. The particular skills I will bring to the board include a focus on the voice and participation of patients and service users in the local community, and an understanding of the role and needs of local voluntary sector organisations. It is an exciting time for the Care Trust as it works alongside local people to promote wellbeing, participation and services.
I have been commissioned to provide a series of diversity workshops for organisations across the East of England and these will be delivered between September and November this year. The work will also involve developing some existing materials and working across the organisational spectrum with trustees, staff, volunteers and service users.
I delivered my workshop on the future direction of adult health and care services to Greenwich University on 23rd March. We covered issues such as the localism agenda, voice, choice, NHS leadership, service user involvement, participation and the vision of wellbeing.
The softback version of the Open University Book Mental Health Policy And Practice Across Europe has just been released. I am the co-author of chapter five, which covers the evidence base of policy and practice. See the publications section of my website for further details.
In March 2007 stage two of the National Children's Bureau PEAL project came to a close with successful workshops in Manchester and Carlisle. NCB have now put together a larger consortium of partners to take forward stage three of the project and have launched a new website at www.peal.org.uk. Over the next twelve months I will be working with the NCB team to develop a deliver a new series of workshops, a training for trainers programme and other forms of mentoring to promote the involvement and participation of parents in early years children's services.
I have joined the National Association for Voluntary and Community Action (NAVCA) and have become a registered consultant on their Trainers and Consultants Direct database (www.trainersandconsultantsdirect.org.uk)
Throughout March 2007 I will be involved in a gender and power project with openDemocracy (www.opendemocracy.net) which is using an innovative form of communal writing called Renga, which originated in Japan. The idea is to bring together a diverse range of authors to explore gender-related issues and through a shared creative process to highlight some key learning.
I delivered a new developmental workshop for the University of Bradford on 23rd February 2007. The event was a success and enabled
me to get feedback on some recent materials and refine a programme structure for a wider course I am putting together. Working with post-graduate students on the Culture, Identity and Madness course, together we were able to explore issues of diversity, public action and participatory engagements with local communities and apply them to a series of practical issues in local services.
In April 2007 I will be running the new Leadership for Grassroots Social Workers at the University of Greenwich. The innovative two-day course will cover a range of issues to enable newly qualified workers to manage the transition to practice based settings and promote values such as service user involvement, community participation and effective local management.
I have been appointed Honorary Visiting Lecturer at the School of Health at the University of Bradford and will be working with the team at the Centre for Citizenship to deliver programmes on participation and developmental mental health to post-graduates. The first lectures are in February 2007.
A new publication, Researching Public Action and Development Concepts in the Context of Mental Health is due to be published in the journal Development in Practice in March 2007 (volume 17, issue 2).
On the 12th December 2006 I will be speaking at the conference 'Social Enterprise: The future of health provision in primary care' in Central London. I am giving a 45-minute presentation on the role of not-for-profit organisations in the new NHS structures and my co-presenters include former Health Minister Baroness Cumberlidge and David Amess MP. For more details visit www.lexisnexis.co.uk/conferencesandtraining
I am a National Children's Bureau Associate Trainer and am currently working on the Parents and Early Years Learning (PEAL) Project providing training f
or staff from over 700 children's centres across the UK. Workshops are being held all over the country and I will be working in Plymouth, Carlisle and Manchester over the next six months.
I am providing training and organisational development consultancy for the Refugee Advice and Support Centre in Hammersmith (www.rascentre.org.uk) and we are in the development stages of a new leadership and empowerment course for refugees.
I have recently become a peer reviewer for the journal Critical Public Health
The November 2006 issue of the journal Mental Health Today will publish a new article written by myself, Burul Makenbaeva from Bishkek in Kyrgyzstan and Robert Hayward. The paper is titled Policy as a Process: Rethinking Mental Health Policy from the Grassroots
I continue to work with Tees, Esk and Wear Valleys NHS Trust (www.peoplelikeus.nhs.uk) and stakeholders in Middlesbrough to develop the new policy action group there. In the last few months I have delivered a policy skills workshop and an open platform on mental health policy. The action group is beginning to plan public action to influence local policy making and promote positive images of service users as leaders and activists.
I have been working with social work students at the University of Greenwich as an occasional lecturer to deliver sessions on social policy, social work and empowerment.
I combine my freelance work with part time roles as a Director of the not-for-profit social enterprise Mental Health International Development Ltd. and as Chair for the charity InterAction.
