INVOLVE
Family Friendly Mental Health Services
Project description
The INVOLVE Project focuses on the training of participants in developing advocacy strategies regarding the involvement of relatives, friends, partners and carers in relation to the social needs and treatment of the individual they are supporting.
Mental Health Services often unconsciously and consciously exclude family members, friends or other care partners, from the care and treatment process and focus only on the person presenting a mental illness. International research reflects this experience and is supported by EUFAMI’s research on the Value of Caring.
The project commenced in April 2022 and has completed four Information Sessions in the form of Workshops on Advocacy within 2022 and 2023, with participants from Malta, Slovenia, Hungary, Greece, and Ireland.
More specifically, the project focuses on themes to help national member organizations advocate for family involvement in mental health services in their own countries. This includes:
Providing a professional advocacy consulting and mentoring service to participating member organizations.Working with each national member organization to produce an advocacy toolkit to support their program to improve mental health services in their own country.Providing specific training to a mental health advocate in each participating national member organization.
The process is divided into three phases:
- Phase I - the recruitment of national partners and an initial exploratory workshopPhase II - Training in advocacy skills and the development of advocacy strategies - this phase was divided into 4x information sessionsPhase III - guiding implementing partners in the development of their own advocacy strategies and guiding the start of the implementation process.
- Phase I and II of this project have already been completed and our Advocacy Consultant, Ms. Estela Vidal, is currently working with the partners of this project to implement Phase III.
- A Family Advocacy toolkit, which can be adapted by each national member, is in preparation and will include an analysis of inputs, outputs and outcomes.