Mental Health Forum For Cowal

The process of redesigning mental health services in Argyll and Bute
is taking place in three phases:
1. Gathering information about current services and thoughts of how
people would like to see services change.
2. Looking in detail at future service needs and how these could be
delivered – developing a number of models of future care
3. Deciding on preferred options and going out to public consultation
on those options.
Phase one is complete During July 2008 there has seen a series of workshops which began to
take some of the ideas and issues raised in phase one and develop
these into more concrete suggestions. These workshops have been
attended by between 25 and 30 people on each day including service
users/carers. They focussed around three themes:
• Primary care and community support services
• Rehabilitation, recovery and specialised community treatment
• Preventing admission, dealing with crisis and supported discharge
The workshops took the format of discussion groups in which basic
principles of a service were discussed and identified. Ideas were then
developed about how a service would be delivered in a new way.
These ideas are now being turned into service options. Service options
are simply descriptions of the way the Mental Health Service could be
delivered in future).