Mr. Michael Ryan:

I thank the committee for inviting me. I am the head of the office of mental health engagement and recovery for the HSE. What I will speak about relates directly to my work in that role and may come across as quite nuanced, but I think the concepts and what we are here to talk about are scalable in respect of a mental health promotion approach right across HSE work and all health domains. The role and function of mental health engagement and recovery is to ensure the experience of service users, family members, carers and their supporters informs the design, delivery and evaluation of our mental health services. This is achieved through co-production processes and ensures the personal lived and recovery experience of service users, family members and carers is used as a service improvement and therapeutic resource within services. The work of engagement and recovery is central to achieving the person-centred and recovery-orientated service set out in our national policy, Sharing the Vision. The contemporary understanding of recovery is that of an individual achieving a meaningful life and realising personal goals and ambitions regardless of the presence or severity of his or her mental health challenges. A recovery-orientated service is one that facilitates an individual in achieving those recovery goals through the provision of clinical excellence and is informed by lived mental health and recovery experience. Over recent years the HSE mental health service has enhanced the recovery approach in services with a number of innovative initiatives through the office of mental health engagement and recovery.

We have area leads for engagement in all community healthcare organisations, CHOs. These facilitate approximately 35 local engagement forums, whose membership is made up of service users, family members, carers and other interested stakeholders. Additionally, we continue to develop a lived experience cohort to our workforce through the introduction of peer support working on multidisciplinary teams and through our recovery education and recovery college structures in partnership with our NGO colleagues in Mental Health Ireland. Recovery education is about empowering service users, family members, carers, staff and other stakeholders to an enhanced knowledge of recovery and their role in achieving recovery, whether for themselves or in supporting or facilitating others to do so. In 2022 we expect to have approximately 130 experts by experience working directly in the HSE mental health services. I am one of those. Engagement and recovery also oversees the individual placement and support, IPS, programme, which supports people with long-term and enduring mental health challenges to find meaningful work. According to our latest figures, more than 1,000 people are registered in the IPS programme and 441 people have secured meaningful employment since the start of the programme.

In response to the Department's request for submissions on the future funding of education, engagement and recovery has made a submission on the requirements of a contemporary approach to mental health delivery. That approach is based on the principles of recovery and person-centredness underpinned and facilitated by lived mental health experience.

Recovery, as I have outlined, is not merely a clinical process. It also incorporates a personal development process that involves empowering individuals, their families, service providers and communities to be active partners in achieving, supporting and sustaining mental well-being and recovery from mental health challenges. This recovery approach is very well served by an educational and adult learning model that accesses, supports, uses and enhances personal lived mental health experience.

In a contemporary mental health service, lived experience is an expertise that is essential to the delivery of services that provide maximum opportunities for individuals to recover. This expertise, in the context of providing a recovery-orientated service, is comparable to other forms of expertise such as clinical, social, occupational etc.

Our third level colleges and further education providers must respond to these new paradigms in healthcare by meeting the educational and training needs of all stakeholders in the health community, notably clinical staff, service users and their families, carers and supporters, to ensure they have the necessary skills to fulfil their respective roles in recovery-orientated services.