Having been rude about the word "collaborative" last week (see here) this week I attend a rather useful group meeting at the Swalec Stadium known as the Adult Mental Health Leaders Collaborative which brings together, as the name suggests, senior people in the NHS and local government plus key officials in the Welsh Government and some voluntary sector chancers like me.
This is an interesting networking opportunity and I renew acquaintances in what I realise is really quite a small world - the minority who are in management among people working in the narrow field of mental health in the small country that is Wales. It makes me realise that the very high recorded hits on our websites Hafal and Mental Health Wales are getting to a high proportion of the people we need to engage with. Though not competing remotely with those professional offerings even this wretched Blog has 1,000 visits a month by 400 people regularly looking in though admittedly that includes my mum as well as, one hopes, the great and good in Welsh mental health services.
Back to the Collaborative where Welsh Government officials spell out their intention to draft a new or perhaps reiterated mental health strategy for Wales. It sounds promising to me, having a clear focus on individuals achieving recovery through the Care and Treatment Plans required under Part 2 of the Mental Health Measure (though there is concern in the audience that the new strategy may be rushed).
But we will have to work hard to make this a reality, in particular ensuring that in future services are planned and financed as a response to individual patients' Plans rather than the other way round...
