'Together for Change'

28th May 2012

Diverse Cymru recently attended the Together for Change mental health conference in Swansea.

We heard two keynote speeches from Rachel Perkins, a retired but still very active clinical psychologist, and Maddy from Sefyll.

The emphasis was on giving 'service users' (a label very much under scrutiny) more choice and control of the services and care they receive. Rachel, a long term service user herself, in particular wants to reform the way mental health care is given and received. She believes the "them and us", ie "experts" and "patients", relationship needs reform. She proposed a number of simple but effective changes and laid bare many examples of where care is poor.

Maddy is training to be a clinical psychologist through Sefyll who run an excellent scheme of training for all kinds of people.

We then attended a workshop from Time to Change, Wales. This is a partnership between Gofal, Hafal and Mind Cymru that intends to de-stigmatise mental health by allowing those with mental health problems to give presentations and share their experiences.