Co-production, Widening Access
and mental health service users
Mark Richardson
Open University, Widening
Participation Conference
30th April – 01st May, 2014
© University of South Wales
Background
• Started working in mental health (MH) in April 2008.
• People with anxiety, depression, low self worth
• Curriculum – framework tight and heavy assessment.
• Pedagogy - too formal, prevented engagement, reinforced barriers
• Significant barriers - still an eagerness to engage.
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Scale of the mental health (MH)
problem
a. Layard, 2006 “mental illness UK’s biggest social problem”
b. 1 in 4 adults (1 in 5 children) experience mental illness = costs the
economy £128 Billion (Mental Health Foundation, 2010).
c. Between 1 in 5 and 1 in 3 campus students experience a MH
problem (Royal College of Psychiatrists, 2011).
d. Policy is responding across the UK - the Measure in Wales.
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Policy context - The Welsh Measure and the
Together for Mental Health Implementation
Strategy
Engagement becoming a priority
Implementation Strategy reads;
within
WA/WP.
The
Universities to ensure that plans for widening access to higher
education include support for learners with mental health /
substance misuse problems.
England and Scotland have Recovery Colleges developing FE
informed approaches to engagement in MH – not HE though.
If we are to use WA then we will require challenging curriculum
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Challenging curriculum meets
challenging barriers at all levels
• Reduced levels of confidence and aspiration
• Supports adaptive preferences (adapts to disadvantage)
• Stigma and the fear of disclosure (how will I be seen)
• Lack of flexibility in L&T (illness is cyclical – not linear)
• Low retention and submission rates reinforcing ‘failure’.
• Clinical services reluctant to promote HE learning
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Co-Production or student centred is
one way of meeting this challenge
The New Economics Foundation defines coproduction as;
“delivering public services in an equal and
reciprocal relationship between professionals,
people using services, their families and their
neighbours. Where activities are co-produced
in this way, both services and neighbourhoods
become far more effective agents of change”
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Widening Access, Research and Mentoring
(WARM) and the background to the Pen-Y-Fal
Project
1.
New student informed (fully inclusive)
learning approaches with the Archives
2.
Flexible research curriculum within a
recovery model - co-production at the heart
of activity
3.
Includes local service providers and 3rd sector
organisations
aligning
to
policy
developments across the UK.
4.
It is this activity which attracted the County
Archivist to CCL.
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The Pen-Y-Fal Project – challenging our
perceptions of learning and students
Now
Then
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Group composition
• 7 students wanted to engage (one student
withdrew) and were drawn from an existing
group but also another service user group
• All members have experiences of a mental
health problem (anxiety, depression, social
isolation etc).
• One student is a retired academic while the
others are part of the WARM Community
Group.
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Process
• Meetings took place between April and May with CCL,
the newly formed Archives research group and the
Archives with discussions focussed on logistics rather
than education or outcomes.
• Discussions encouraged all involved to explore what
would work best for learning – the decision was to let
the learning develop organically.
• The group’s experiences of mental illness are taken as the
point for developing research outcomes and for personal
learning pathways
“It was
absolutely
amazing on that
first day when
we weren’t
doing anything
except looking.
Picking things up
and putting
them down”
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Agreed format
• We literally worked to the demands of the project
within an empty research framework
• Framed the research between 1865 – 1875.
• Outcomes would be decided as the project grew but
tied to the research informed module
we just placed ourselves in there and said ‘Off [we] go’
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Some Early Barriers
“I’m considering something for the future in research - It’s
progress from before when I didn’t have any aspirations at all”
• Language in the records difficult (technical and historic)
• Group had no idea of what to expect from an Archives.
• Handwritten records offered interpretation challenges
• Otherwise – this has worked very well indeed
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Learning and Teaching?
“I think this is why it works, because we all go
off into something we enjoy”
• This is co-production - No one
dominant
position
process
discussed and negotiated – working
with individual goals and aspirations.
• We all became co-creators of learning
(and meaning) - influences outcomes
• Student identity as an empowering
alternative
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Academic/outcomes
• 3 journal research papers (health, education and
Archive)
• Two case studies
• Glossary of terms will be presented to the Archives at
our conference in September 2014
• Case study charting pharmacology
• Demographic database locating key statistics
• Analysis of intervention activities for patients at the
asylum
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Personal Outcomes.
“That is a natural part of the process,
because when you are doing
education, your confidence level goes
up and your aspirations increase as
well”.
What is consistent is a sense of hope for
the future with renewed ability coming
from ;
• Raised confidence
• Aspiration
• New directions
• And recognition of capability levels
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Conclusions
1. Confident that this approach is new to HE outreach
2. Offers a new progression route into, through and beyond HE for
MH service users.
3. Opportunities for understanding co-production, pedagogy and
and education.
4. Challenges our understanding of learning in ‘hard-to-reach’
areas recognising new identities for otherwise stigmatized groups
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The End
Many thanks for listening to me talk about
something I am passionate about – I hope I
have managed to share this passion and if you
wish to contact me or discuss further
mark.richardson1@southwales.ac.uk
(01633) 432960
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References
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Mental Health Foundation Economic burden of mental illness cannot be tackled
without research investment Accessed from
http://www.mentalhealth.org.uk/content/assets/PDF/campaigns/MHF-Businesscase-for-MH-research-Nov2010.pdf
Layard, R (2006) in THE DEPRESSION REPORT A New Deal for Depression and
Anxiety Disorders a report by The Centre for Economic Performance’s Mental
Health Policy Group
Royal College of Psychiatrists (2011) Mental health of students in higher education
College report CR166 Royal College of Psychiatrists
Mental Health (Wales) Measure (2010)
Together for Mental Health Delivery Plan (2012-16) for the Welsh Government’s
Mental Health Measure (2010) [Action 15.7]
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