1. Thrive Citywide approaches to mental health & wellbeing 13 July 2017
Steve Appleton
Managing Director
Contact Consulting

2. A little bit about me
30 years working in mental health - lapsed social worker
Operational and strategic management at local, regional and national level
Now work with NHS, councils, voluntary sector, housing bodies on commissioning, strategy and improvement in mental health across the UK and beyond
Project managed and wrote Thrive West Midlands, consultant author to Thrive London
UK liaison manager for International Initiative for Mental Health Leadership

3. Thrive internationally
In New York, Thrive NYC is a citywide programme endorsed by the Mayor and First Lady of New York to ‘reduce the toll of mental illness, but also promote mental health and protect New Yorkers’ resiliency, self-esteem, family strength and joy.
In November 2015 Thrive NYC published their roadmap for mental health. A team within City Hall in New York are implementing 54 actions.
In its first year, Thrive NYC’s achievements include:
Training more than 2,300 New Yorkers in identifying signs and symptoms of mental illness, how to respond in a crisis, and how to connect people to treatment
Launching a public awareness campaign called Today I Thrive - the subway poster campaign alone is estimated to have reached two million people
Creating a network of 23 School Mental Health Consultants to ensure every school has access to experts to help meet the needs of their students. 100 consultants will be in place by the end of 2017

4. Thrive West Midlands
Mental Health Commission backed by West Midlands Combined Authority
Chaired by Norman Lamb MP
Significant public engagement
Action orientated, concordat approach
Published 31 January 2017

5. West Midlands actions

7. Thrive London Work began 18 months ago
Engagement with a range of people and organisations
Joint approach with Mayoral support
Working groups including people with lived experience of mental health challenges
Published on 4 July 2017

9. Common themes Mental health, not simply mental illness
A focus on population, not organisations
Prevention and community resilience
Awareness and mental health literacy, everybody’s business
Role of employment, housing
Effectiveness, outcomes, bang for buck.

10. Approach to engagement
The Open Space events were an attempt to enable stakeholders from the region’s mental health system and the public to influence the deliberations of the Commission.
Large public engagement events such as this are often problematic, all too often they consist of a series of presentations followed by a question and answer session which is dominated by people who feel eloquent and confident enough to participate.
The aim of these events was to try to do something different. In order to achieve this the tried and tested ‘Open Space’ methodology was used by the facilitators.

11. Open Space
Open Space can be described as an approach for working with large groups which enables the participation of all those who have an interest in an issue to talk about what they want to talk about.
Everyone is invited to think about an issue or question that they would like to start a conversation about, that will help to answer the over arching question.
Those that want to volunteer to start the conversation (the convenors) write their issue/question on a piece of paper which is then slotted into the blank agenda on the wall.
Once the agenda is full everyone moves to whichever conversation they want to start with, they are free to move between discussions.

12. Citizen’s Jury
The importance of involving people with lived experience of mental health problems in well- being and mental health policy-making is undisputed.
However, there are still seldom opportunities for this to happen in a way that reflects the challenges of enabling citizens to navigate their way through this complex issue and then write meaningful recommendations.
The target group of Citizens Jury participants was those with current or previous lived experience and carers from the West Midlands.
The second essential element was that participants should reflect the diversity of local populations. An effort was also made to try to recruit people that have no little previous experience of engaging in similar processes

13. After a three week period of promotion through targeted agencies and individuals and the local media, 115 local people made applications to take part in the Citizens Jury
This is an exceptionally high response rate for Citizens Jury recruitment.
20 people were offered places, average attendance was 14.
Together they met for eight sessions, a total of some 24 hours, to share experiences and opinions, to listen to each other, to challenge each other, to deliberate.

14. Challenges of engagement
Pre-conceived ideas about consultation
Living up to the hype
Reaching beyond established organisations and involving diverse and representative individuals and communities
Costs and time
Sustainability and momentum

15. Opportunities from engagement
Buy-in
Costs and time
Co-productive ethos
The influence and grounding of real experience
Rebalancing the power
Ownership
Platforms for further work.

16. Thriving should be about: The whole city, the whole population
It should provide opportunities to engage, to listen and to do
Requires leadership, collaboration and collective will
Succeeds if you have agreed ambitions, aspirations and actions
It’s in your grasp – good luck!