2 July 2010

Pact Southland has a new contract with the Southern District Health Board which is all about consumer leadership, consultancy and liaison.

Regional manager Jackie Kruger says much of the work in the contract will be a continuation of work Pact does anyway through service advisor coordinator Ailsa Fenton.

The work used to be done in the South Island centrally, but is now being devolved back into the regions.

The contract covers a variety of things including:

• Ensuring services are responsive to the needs of service users

• Ensuring service users have input into the development of services

• Promoting the ongoing development and utilisation of the lived experience of recovery in mental health and addiction
services

• Providing leadership to mental health and addiction service providers from a service users’ perspective and a philosophy
of recovery and harm reduction

• Conveying services users’ perspectives to local mental health and addiction services

Jackie believes the ability to achieve this last goal was probably a key driver in devolving the service back down to the grassroots level.

She says the contract is not just about Pact consumers.

"It’s about consumers across the board. Pact holds the contract but we do intend to work in close collaboration with the Southland Consumer Advisory Council. We will work with those existing partners to make sure these things are delivered. "

Although Pact does not have any addiction services itself, mental health and addiction services come together a lot in Southland through the Future Directions Mental Health and Addictions Network (Pact is a member of this network).

"While we’re not an active provider we are an active partner," says Jackie.

Jackie says Ailsa will investigate linking up with Public Health South to look at some sort of community-level promotion around lived experience and recovery. Strength to Strength will also run stories valuing lived experience each month, starting this month with Ailsa’s own story (below).

Ailsa will continue to remain involved with strategic planning for mental health and addiction services in Southland with the Future Directions Mental Health and Addictions Network. She will also actively liaise with consumers in rural areas of Southland, Jackie says.

"At the moment we’ve been quite focused on Pact consumers. Now we can look at a wider group of consumers and make sure that we don’t just do what’s easy in Invercargill – that we make a point of getting out to people that maybe have a much more isolated existence in rural areas."