Following our work evaluating the implementation of the Community Mental Health Framework for Adults and Older Adults 2019 it was clear that:
- Implementation varied across the country
- Despite government guidelines, implementation continued to be a work in progress, and required ongoing work to maintain
- Implementation required shifts in thinking and culture that had wider impacts on how mental health service work
To support this ongoing work we hosted and facilitated a local knowledge mobilisation network to share and support ongoing learning and changes.
Aims
The South-West Community Mental Health Knowledge Mobilization Network is an open-invite group which meet regularly to share information about the implementation of the Community Mental Health Framework For Adults And Older Adults 2019, and the sustainability and continuation of providing mental health services in a manner aligned with the ethos of this Framework. We aim to:
- Give space and audience to share learning when implementing the Framework across Somerset, Cornwall, and Devon. This learning may be via both informal conversation/opinion or via formal evaluations/research. This learning can include work that was not designed intentionally to address implementing the Framework but is aligned to the aims of the Framework.
- A safe space to share what is going well, what is more tricky, and to ‘pick the brains’ of others in order to improve implementation of the Framework across the South-West.
- Contribute to the wider, national, knowledge exchange: https://sites.google.com/nihr.ac.uk/cmhtknowledgeexchange/home
Activity
We facilitated regular meetings with those working in the community mental health arena across the south west. We worked together with network members to design the network, to set topics, to chair sessions and to sharing outputs. More recently network members have begun to take responsibility for chairing sessions and writing blog outputs, creating a more co-produced knowledge mobilisation approach.
Outputs
We have created a series of blog posts sharing the learnings in our discussions:
Next steps
The initial run for this project has finished. Network members expressed the value in this network and a desire for it to continue, however changing funding and political landscapes may affect their ability to take part. Our next piece of work is to assess the value, desire and logistics of an ongoing sharing space.