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The "Recovery Movement" has gained significant momentum in the last four decades. A key feature is an emphasis on the uniqueness of every person's experience of mental health problems or illness. Irrespective of the course, duration or severity of the problem, "recovery is being able to live a meaningful and satisfying life in the presence or absence of symptoms" ([8] Scottish Recovery Network, 2006).
There is, therefore, probably nothing more important than supporting an individual in their journey to recovery. However, how do service users, providers, carers and commissioners ensure that they have the means to ensure that support is effective, evidenced and the basis for self-management, reflective practice and service improvements?
The Mental Health Recovery Star
This is an innovative tool developed by Triangle Consulting and the Mental Health Providers Forum (MHPF). It is a holistic and personalised outcomes measurement and recovery-focused key working tool and it was designed primarily for people of working age:
- Outcomes properties. The tool enables individuals to plan, quantify and describe their progress and organisations to effectively capture, measure and summarise change and service effectiveness across a range of service users and projects.
- Key working properties. The tool supports the service user's recovery by providing them with linguistic descriptors and a visual map of where they are in their recovery journey. It enables them to plot their progress and to plan the actions required to meet their recovery goals. This structure supports communication and engagement with key workers, enabling joint planning of personalised support.
- Holistic and personalised properties. The tool brings ten areas of a person's life into focus at the same time ensuring that the assessment is holistic, and with the flexibility of ten progress-based steps for each area, an individual picture is formed at each assessment.
- Recovery properties. For each area or dimension of a person's life, the Star describes a recovery-focused journey which motivates the individual to make progress, not be overwhelmed, and see even small steps as significant, achievable and hopeful.
Origins and development
The Recovery Star is a version of the Outcomes Star which was developed to support and measure change for homeless people. Its development took place over a four-year period, with the final version published in 2006.
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