Topic Area: How can mental health services be supported to provide best practice through co-ordination of services and benchmarking with others? How this is achieved in an environment that is committed to consumer participation and recovery oriented practice? And how does PIR intend to create a sustainable legacy of change that continues after the completion of the program?

The aim of the presentation “Legacy of Change” is to use the experience and objectives of the PIR model to demonstrate best practice; in particular the co-ordination of services, benchmarking with others, consumer participation and recovery orientated practice, to enable sustainable systems change after the completion of the program. PIR hopes to achieve a profound and lasting change in the mental health system and the continued collaboration of services.

The consumers we partner with experience severe and persistent mental health issues with complex needs. Our work aims to improve how the mental health system responds to this target group. We have adopted the recovery approach, developed easier to negotiate referral pathways, facilitated access to a range of services and supports, provided a better coordinated and integrated service sector in the inner west and deliver holistic care tailored to individual need.

The target groups are particularly vulnerable and we often have to challenge the assumptions that these target groups are too “sick” to participate. Not just in society but in their own recovery journey. Often these consumers not only grapple with their own obstacles that inhibit hope but with low expectations of the service system itself. We have continued to critique these ideas that have informed practice and have achieved real systems change. This is an ongoing process.

We critique on an ongoing basis our combined practices and engage in regular training on recovery principles. Our target group is clearly defined and we recognize that the consumers we work with are often the most marginalized and disadvantaged and therefore the most likely to have been let down by the service system.

Three presenters-
1. Melanie Hardman (Chairperson) and Support Facilitator, 30 minutes
2. Travis King – Consumer Coordinator, 20 minutes
3. Karen Wells- Consumer Representative, 20 minutes each

Questions/Discussion 20 minutes

Melanie Hardman Stakeholder Engagement Co-ordinator. Melanie will begin the discussion by briefly introducing the PIR model, the service objectives, target group and referral pathways. Then she will outline her role and the relevant stakeholders of the program as well as posing the question to the audience, how can we leave a legacy of change once the PIR funding has ceased?

Support Facilitator -A Support Facilitator will outline the achievements made from the PIR program model and what we have learnt along the way, the challenges and how we hope to have demonstrated best practice.

Support Facilitator discussion will include;
• Facilitating better co-ordination of clinical and support services across multiple sectors
• Complimenting (as opposed to duplicating) services for better outcomes
• Delivering holistic and integrated care tailored to individual need
• Benefits of each PIR model being unique

Travis King. Travis will share with the audience the many ways in which consumers are now an essential driving element who inform PIR practice and the different forms in which this participation takes place.

IWSPIR consumer participation discussion will include information regarding;
• Consumer representation at: IWSPIR meetings, conferences and forums, service evaluation, flexible funding assessments
• Development of a consumer and carer participation framework
• Consumer and carer advocacy groups
• A peer worker network which is being introduced in IWSPIR

Karen Wells . Karen shares her lived experience and how it relates to the PIR model. Particularly the shift that occurred with holistic care and the adoption of the recovery approach. Karen sites this as the beginning of her recovery journey and the transformation that occurred.

Providing recovery orientated Services and the impact of holistic care discussion will include;
• How the PIR model recognizes that recovery is unique and personal for every consumer
• Recovery; the recognition of the strengths of each person and moving from despair to hope
• Recovery journeys need partnership and support
• The difficulty experienced trying to navigate health and community services which aren't well integrated
• Exploring the ways in which needs are met with holistic co-ordinated service delivery

Question for group discussion:

How can we embed the PIR model into the system? How can we make systems change sustainable?

This paper will explore the meanings that drive psychosis and the essential need to explore that meaning through creativity, and in my case, poetry. The best thing we can do following an episode is to reflect on that experience, write and find the meaning that the episode reveals. All human experience has meaning and yet psychiatry often seeks to medicalise and dismiss our experience of other spaces, other places.
Referencing poets such as Francis Webb and Peter Kocan, and my muse Kurt Vonnegut I will present a story based on over thirty years of poetry. Promises of Cold War intrigue and the possibility that psychosis is revelatory mean that this paper seeks to translate our art into the mainstream – into reality.
Since my first episode in 1983, I have always known that my experience of mental illness enhances my touching of this planet and as an Australian poet I think it is time to talk about how we communicate the essential and important meanings of our selves. And how we nurture the muse within us all.

There is a growing body of studies (e.g. Krause, North & Hewitt, 2015; Skanlan, 2010) investigating the use of music as a technology of health (Ruud, 2002). Findings from recent Australian studies (Cheong-Clinch, 2013; Hense, McFerran & McGorry, 2015; McFerran & Saarikallio, 2014) report that young people across the health continuum listen to music to identify and manage their emotions and environments on a daily basis.
This presentation will focus on the importance of music for young people with mental illness. Examples from clinical work and doctoral research will be used to illustrate the ways these young people engage with music in their everyday life, and in therapy during an admission to an acute psychiatric facility. The key concepts identified have implications to use music to support young people’s recovery and ongoing mental health care in both acute care and community engagement. This is particularly relevant as they are often disengaged socially and academically (SANE, 2005).
I will also discuss the relevance of music therapy as a youth- and recovery- oriented approach to facilitate engagement, participation and empowerment for young people with mental illness. In light of current mental health strategies, such collaboration with young people themselves is a much needed and appropriate mental health approach to the developmental needs of adolescents, in particular supporting the “emerging adult”.