The UKRF Recovery Principles

• Recovery lies within individuals, families and communities and is self-directed and empowering.

• Recovery lies within our ‘connectedness’ to others, is holistic and has many cultural dimensions.

• Recovery is supported by peers, families and allies within communities.

• Recovery involves the personal, cultural and structural recognition of the need for participative change, transformation and the building of recovery capital.

• Recovery involves a continual process of change and self-redefinition for individuals, families, organisations and communities.

• Recovery challenges all discrimination and transcends shame and stigma.

• Recovery emerges from hope, gratitude, love and gifts to others.

• There are many pathways to Recovery and no individual, community or organisation has the right to claim ownership of the ‘right pathway’.

• Recovery exists on a continuum of improved health and well-being.

• Recovery transcends, whilst embracing, a wide variety of approaches and does not seek to be prescriptive.

• Honesty, self-awareness and openness lie at the heart of Recovery.

• Recovery is a Reality & Contagious.

Supporting Connections & Learning:

North-West. West Yorkshire. N Lincs. South East Region: Sussex, Kent. Eastern Region: Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire, Hertfordshire, Norfolk. Wiltshire. Lanarkshire. Glasgow 2010. Edinburgh.Cardiff 2011. Brighton 2012. Somerset. Exeter. Birmingham 2013. London: Camden, Kingston, Barnet, Barking, Wandsworth. Islington. Derbyshire & Midlands

Community-led, strength-based, diverse, open & inclusive.

Committed to personal, cultural and structural transformation.

VALUES & IDEAS

Everyone’s Recovery is unique

Recovery in the field of mental health services is actually a complex of ideas - but I propose it can be understood most simply as hope that someone, particularly someone in the throes of suffering acutely from a serious and persistent mental health problem, can reclaim their life or create a newly meaningful one

Recovery is difficult, idiosyncratic, and requires faith - but it is possible

Recovery is a truly unifying human experience...recovery is unique to each person

Like mental illness itself, the notion of recovery represents a multidimensional set of phenomena which may share nothing more than a Wittgensteinian sense of 'family resemblance’

Some key people & dates in Recovery History

Shared HumanityPhillipe Pinel & Jean-Baptise Pussin 1793 Traitement Moral: Care, belonging & meaning bring recovery. The beginnings of ‘Peer Support’. Taking over the Asylum.

Reciprocity (giving & receiving)Dorothea Dix 1840Healthy environments promote health. Social Justice & Therapeutic Living.Jane Addams 1889Living ‘with’ & ‘doing with’ (as opposed to ‘doing to’) in the Community to promote Recovery (Personal, Cultural & Structural). We are more alike as human beings than different.

The importance of Community & the ‘Everyday’Adolf Meyer 1900M/H illness like other illnesses – people can & do recover & in ‘madness’ all have areas of functioning/strengths. Everyday life (our interactions) in the social world is key to recovery.

Mutual Aid & Self Help

Alcoholics Anonymous (AA), the first twelve-step fellowship founded August 11, 1938Civil Rights Movement 1960’sEquality before the lawConsumer/Survivor/Ex-Patient Movement Late 1980’s & early 1990’s

Changing the culture, building on our strengths & becoming active agents in our own lives

Bill White 1986 +From Cultures of Addiction to Cultures of RecoveryLarry Davidson 2003 +Finding a sense of self in Recovery & living a meaningful gratifying life in the presence of an ongoing mental illnessJohn McKnight 1985 +Moving from a deficit world to an asset worldThe Abundant Community

Waves of Public Health:

1830-1900 Wave 1: Classical public health interventions (water, sanitation), growth of municipal power & influence, rise of the ‘expert’…

1890-1950 Wave 2: Scientific Rationalism, germ theory of disease, hospitals, health visitors...

1940-1980 Wave 3: Post war consensus, social solidarity, welfare state, new housing, NHS…

1960- 2000 Wave 4: focus on individual risk factors/lifestyle issues, rise of neo-liberalism & ‘challenges of ‘modernity’…

- Economism- Individualism- Consumerism & Materialism

“A people are as healthy and confident as the stories they tell themselves. Sick storytellers can make their nations sick. And sick nations make for sick storytellers.”Ben Okri

"Every few hundred years in Western history there occurs a sharptransformation. Within a few short decades, society - itsworldview, its basic values, its social and political structures, itsarts, its key institutions - rearranges itself … We are currentlyliving through such a time.”Peter Drucker (2002)

“Modern society: unequal, inequitable and unsustainable”Phil Hanlon (2012)

The 5th Wave:

Integrative: Valuing the subjective (the ‘I’ & ‘We’) & objective (evidence/science) & bringing communities & services together to co-produce.

Valuing stories & wisdom within families, neighbourhoods & communities (Cahn’s ‘Core Economy’).

Creative, ecological, ethical & beautiful.

Re-integrating the true, the good and the beautiful.

‘love, care, or compassion’.

UKRF Recovery Charter Values: 

Respect

 Hope & Optimism

 Genuine & Equal Human Relationships  Shared Learning & Support

 Self-Determination & Personal/Community Strengths  Reciprocity