One Page Summary

People with mental health problems and cognitive impairments are among the most excluded in society and frequently have restricted social networks due to marginalization and stigmatization in the community. Often excluded from opportunities to live, work, and engage with others, adults with mental health problems experience obstacles to acquiring and maintaining friendships. To acquire and sustain relationships for this group of individuals within the community is the challenge that is being met by this action. This is achieved by actively engaging the community in the rehabilitation efforts of the individual and making the community part of the support structure. In practical terms, this means educating the community about mental illness and disability and developing the support structures that will sustain the bi-lateral relationship individual-community. Such support structures are peer-to-peer support, where individuals who have overcome mental illness assist others who are now struggling in order to provide reassurance and support. The development of an online community is another support structure, where a community of individuals with common mental health problems are brought together through social media to help them better self-manage their conditions. In parallel, individuals are taught to manage their illness in a more effective way through the support of professionals. Individuals are not simply viewed as their illness, as such, individual interviews are being conducted to assess individual strengths. Individuals will have a say in the design and development of their treatment and vocational training. Professionals will be trained to move from being ‘fixers’ to ‘facilitators’, requiring a different set of skills. A team-based approach to health service provision will be adopted, thus abandoning traditional role boundaries and relinquish claims of exclusivity to health care practices and  knowledge. Synergy's team are experienced to recognize that individuals have different motivations and capacities to play a bigger part in the design and delivery of services. Thus, the team is flexible to adjust delivery of services according to individual needs. This can be achieved by increasing the availability of services available in the community. =In addition, each individual will have a designed case manager who then co-ordinates a team of medical professionals (General Practitioners, nurses), specialists (psychiatrists, psychologists, disability specialists), and social care/ welfare services. The implications of implementing this solution is that an integrated care system is created around the individual with a focus on social integration. Community organizational structures are already in place and will be used in the action-The Local Council of Social Action, the Social Solidarity Private Institutions (IPSS) of the municipality, the Socio-Occupational Unit of Carregal do Sal, and “Vários”. Synergy's team differs from competitors in that it combines academic knowledge with applied experience in the fields of mental illness, disability, community mental health, and cultural studies. Therefore, a multi-dimensional approach is expected to be taken, which differs from uni-dimensional approached proposed by competitors. The solution has been tested in other contexts that they team has worked in the past. It is constructed around the notion of patient empowerment and user-friendly services. The strength of this model is that it is a new combination of practices and approaches
developed to better address social needs, thus promoting social integration of individuals usually ostracized by the community. Its strength lies on the fact that community becomes actively engaged with the affected individuals, through education and learning new skills. A weakness is that since this action constitutes a practice that differs from mainstream activity and have not been implemented before (or at least not in that context or at that scale) it is impossible to know at the outset whether the innovation will indeed provide a better, more just or effective approach to the social needs of the individual. However, Synergy's team apart from being highly experienced, it includes a Portuguese researcher whose knowledge with the local culture and community brings a unique asset to the solution proposed and will help the team scale it into the new context.