The evidence
Asset-based community development
This is an approach to sustainable community-driven development which is based on the idea that communities can drive the development process themselves by identifying and mobilizing existing, but often unrecognised ‘assets.’ An asset can be anything that exists within a community that can be leveraged for positive change and is often categorised as the skills and experience of individuals, the informal associations with common interests, people organised into formal institutions, physical or social places used by communities, or the ways that people interact and connect. Rather than focusing on the challenges that exist in communities, the approach focuses on ‘what’s strong, not what’s wrong’, thereby responding to challenges and creating local social improvement.
Co-design
This is a process that uses creative and participatory methods to create new healthcare inventions or services with different groups of people who have ‘lived experience of using and delivering them. In co-design, decision-making is shared equally throughout the process - everyone taking part has an equal level of power. There is no one-size-fits-all approach. Instead, there are patterns and principles that can be applied in different ways to different people. Importantly, co-designers make decisions, not just suggestions.
Co-design is about challenging the imbalance of power held by individuals who make important decisions about others’ lives, livelihoods and bodies. Often, with little to no involvement of the people who will be most impacted by those decisions. It seeks to change that through prioritising relationships, using creative tools, and building capability. It uses inclusive convening to share knowledge and power.
Task Sharing
This is an approach to delivering health services that involves training, upskilling, and supervising community and voluntary sector workers in service delivery roles that are traditionally held by specialised professionals. There is currently a lack of providers who can provide services in hard-to-reach communities and there is an untapped resource of non-NHS workers who could fill human resource shortages in low-intensity roles. Task sharing is envisioned to create a more rational distribution of tasks and responsibilities among health workers to improve access and cost-effectiveness. Task sharing is used widely in low and middle-income countries and this project seeks to join efforts to understand how it can be applied to vulnerable communities in the UK.
Social Recovery Therapy
This is an individual psychological intervention developed by Professor David Fowler and colleagues, with support and involvement from the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR), the Medical Research Council, the University of East Anglia, the University of Sussex, Greater Manchester Mental Health NHS Foundation Trust, Sussex Partnership, NHS Foundation Trust, Norfolk and Suffolk NHS Foundation Trust, and many other organisations and individuals.
SRT has its foundations in clinical practice and has been refined through large-scale research projects in youth mental health and psychosis. The foundation of SRT is that social disability itself is an index of severity. Social disability is an important way to identify people who are at risk of developing serious, complex and enduring mental health problems and, where co-present with emerging psychological difficulties, is a clear risk factor for enduring and worsening mental health problems.