Wellbeing and Recovery Partnership (WaRP)

Wellbeing and Recovery Partnership Logo

The Recovery Education Centre's Autumn Term is fast approaching. Visit our website for details of courses to come.

 

Download our Summer 2012 Newsletter to keep up to date with our developments.  

 

The WaRP is a partnership between the Dorset Mental Health Forum (DMHF), NHS Dorset: Dorset Healthcare University NHS Foundation Trust. The WaRP was initially established in 2009 in West Dorset between Dorset Primary Care Trust provider services and the DMHF. Our Trust formally joined the partnership in December 2010 and since then the WaRP has been working across the whole of Dorset.

The aim of the WaRP is to change the culture of mental health services and people's attitudes to mental health in Dorset through promoting the principles of wellbeing and the philosophy of recovery. Central to this is the partnership between people with lived experience, their supporters and mental health professionals.

We have been recognised nationally by: the Centre for Mental Health, the NHS Federation and the National Mental Health Development Unit's 'Implementing Recovery for Organisational Change' (ImROC) programme, who have granted us the status of being a national demonstration site.

 

They Identified the following Key Achievements:

  • Partnership working: We have increased the scope and levels of sophistication of our partnership working between people with lived experience and professional staff. There is an increasing understanding of the importance of expertise by experience.

  • Hidden Talents: This is for statutory staff within DCHS who have lived experience and are involved in challenging stigma and looking at how people can use their experiences within their work. Download the Hidden Talents Booklet for more details.

  • Lived experience mentors for psychiatrists: We have a pilot project where people who have accessed the service are coaching psychiatrists on how to work in more recovery orientated ways.

  • Peer Specialists: We are continuing to develop our peer specialist posts (people with lived experience working in NHS teams modelling recovery) and the initial pilot project gave positive results.  
 
 
For more information on the projects being undertaken by the Wellbeing and Recovery Partnership please see the Dorset Mental Health Forum Website.