The Coalition: Our Programme for Government document was published in May 2010, and provides an overview of the key policies that the new Coalition Government will take forward. The programme is set around inspirations of Freedom, Fairness and Responsibility and aim to deliver a radical, reforming government that will develop a stronger society, a smaller state and power and responsibility in the hand of every citizen, thereby creating a Big Society matched by big Citizens.
In understanding the Coalition Government programmes, partners need to be mindful of the potential implication for existing Sport and Physical Activity programmes, for which the Government may wish to steer in another direction or may not be their priority.
This document was prepared by the West Midlands and shared with the regions to look at possible impacts on physical activity agendas and links to current work programmes of The Coalition Programme.

The Coalition: our programme for government - potential implications for physical activity

There is growing interest in service design to support transformation in mental healthcare. Early research in this area has shown some promising results, but has also revealed the contentious nature of this work. A better understanding of the complexity of design in mental health is needed to support the development of approaches that are appropriate for this context. As such, the aim of this paper is to examine areas of contention and related strategies employed when designing for mental health transformation. To realize this aim, a qualitative multiple case study of ten service design initiatives in mental health contexts was conducted. The analysis revealed five interconnected contentious issues: organizational constraints; ensuring meaningful participation; culture clashes; power dynamics; and systems approaches. These contentious issues are detailed and related strategies from various cases are put forward, providing a rich foundation for the ongoing development of service design approaches in mental health.

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Designing in highly contentious areas: Perspectives on a way forward for mental healthcare transformation

This paper considers the potential impact of the co-design process on the wellbeing of stakeholders involved in mental health service design. The findings presented here are drawn from semi-structured interviews conducted with both co-designers of a perinatal mental health service, who previously had issues with their mental health and acted as experts by experience, and the service users who accessed the designed offer. These have subsequently been analysed using a General Inductive Analysis approach (Thomas, 2006) to understand the factors that impacted on a participant’s wellbeing in both circumstances. Our findings highlight that there are similarities between the factors that impacted on the wellbeing of the co-designers and those that impacted on the wellbeing of service users accessing a mental health service. This paper suggests ways in which the design community might learn from the mental health sector to manage, and potentially improve, co-designers’ wellbeing during the co-design process. It also suggests how the role of the designer might need to expand to explicitly consider and manage the wellbeing of co-designers during a project.

/pdf/co-designing-wellbeing-the-commonality-of-needs-between-co-4b5fc4i56x.pdf

Co-designing wellbeing: the commonality of needs between co-designers and mental health service users

This paper presents the findings from a case study of a grants programme aimed at growing service design practice within a mental health network. The case study employed a ‘grants plus’ model, offering both money and coaching support, to promote the use of service design and build ‘communities of practice’ around this common approach within the organisation. The authors reflect on the findings from two grants programmes and share the advantages and challenges of building a design community through a funded model. This offers learning for those trying to scale Service Design practice across organisations or communities, as well as anyone trying to encourage the use of the process with other teams or organisations where there is a perceived power imbalance.

Funding Service Design: growing Service Design practice through a grants programme

Service Design in Mind (SDiM) is a programme run by Mind, the national mental health charity. The programme aims to embed service design techniques and methods into a network of local voluntary organisations that deliver mental health services. This case study describes how the programme, based on the idea that everybody designs and everyone can be a designer, aimed to create a diffused design culture (Manzini, 2015) across the charity and its network. By capitalising on existing internal design expertise and sensibility, Mind developed a bespoke design approach and a set of resources, as well as skills and capabilities to improve and transform mental health services.

https://www.ep.liu.se/ecp/125/054/ecp16125054.pdf

Jake Garber

Papers

Embedding Design in a Mental Health Network