ARCHIVE NEWS

St.Helens Mind and our partners at Heath Park Lodge were recently nominated for a Community Partnerships Award in the Best Social Care Partnership Category. Representatives from each team attended the awards event in London where the Centre was Highly Commended for its work.

The LGC (Local Government Chronicle) Awards are the biggest in local government, recognising the success and achievements of the very best in local government. St.Helens Mind works in Partnership with St.Helens Council’s Social Inclusion team at Heath Park Lodge.

Heath Park Lodge is a Resource Centre aiming to help adults with mental health difficulties to have the same opportunities for social participation and access to services as anyone else. We want to help individuals recover and reach their full potential. There are five teams based at the Centre:

Adult Social Care and Health - Social Inclusion Team

Making Space - Developing Options Service

Coalition of Disabled People - Self Help Development Service

St.Helens Mind - Befriending Service

Job Centre Plus - Incapacity Advisers

Social care is increasingly delivered through partnerships between councils and a diverse range of organisations, including private companies and third sector bodies

The growing demand for social care is an increasingly important issue for society at large and councils and health bodies in particular.

These awards recognise showpiece examples of social care joint working between the public sector and its partners.

The Heath Park Lodge Resource Centre Partnership had to prove that we had:

Delivered added value by working together in a partnership

With examples, brought organisations together across traditional

organisational and service boundaries

Empowered and involved service users in the design and delivery of services

Generated innovative responses to pressing social care needs

Created efficiencies by working with partners, releasing savings which have been reinvested in improved front-line service delivery for clients

I am sure you will agree that the teams did remarkably well for its first time as a nominee at this prestigious Awards Event.