In the UK today major changes are taking place in the way we provide support and care for people with mental health problems. Recent policy and practice in Scotland highlights the need to transform the culture and practice of existing work. Some observers have characterised this change as the ‘second wave of deinstitutionalisation’ following on from the work to close long stay psychiatric hospitals in the 1980s and 90s. During this time people were enabled to move INTO the community, the ‘second wave’ now involves ensuring that people are PART of the community and able to participate as active citizens.For Penumbra our focus on recovery remains the central theme in all that we do, whether this is delivering services, raising awareness or contributing to national policy discussions. All our work aims to ensure that we remain hopeful and focused on positive outcomes for people with mental health problems. Over the year we have heard many recovery stories from service users of both small and large steps they have taken to achieve a better life for themselves.

Personalisation of services means that rather than presuming that “one size fits all”, it is essential to enable people to have care and support built around their personal needs, choices and aspirations.

Significance for Penumbra is about influencing, persuading and modelling new ways of working. Penumbra continues to focus on all aspects of mental health and wellbeing and as such we are often asked to contribute to Government working groups and committees on this issue. We have also been successful in winning, in partnership with Health in Mind, a contract from NHS Education for Scotland to roll out values based and recovery focused training for trainers to staff in the NHS and local authorities. Significance is also gained by the work we do as a member of the ‘see me’ anti stigma campaign where we actively support and promote the message ‘let’s stop the stigma of mental ill health’. Penumbra hosts The Scottish Recovery Network which has also developed and delivered a substantial body of work and evidence to support and promote the key message of recovery for people with mental health problems.

Challenges will also be a feature of the coming years as public spending will be reduced to counter the effects of the economic crisis. Already we have experienced freezes and cuts to some of our services and we can expect more tendering and re-tendering of services as Councils seek to make savings. Whilst we need to ensure we are competitive as far as possible, we must also pay attention to our own principles of valuing staff and service users. Equally we can see these challenges as opportunities to rethink and design our services so that we continue to develop the latest ideas and models of services and activities. We can use our collective creativity to come up with new service models that offer exciting possibilities for people with mental health problems.

Overall our aim is to continue to provide, innovate and develop high quality services and activities that reflect contemporary ideas and the needs and aspirations of people concerned about their mental health and wellbeing.