Better Mental Health: A call for ideas
Personalisation in mental health services is really difficult but it’s really important. Across the North West, people in the public and third sectors are applying their passion and ingenuity to supporting and empowering people. But no one person has all the answers and together we can always do better.
Innovation Exchange, supported by the Cabinet Office, is working with the North West Joint Improvement Partnership to create a Festival of Ideas on Friday 4th September 2009 from 9.30am until 4pm in Manchester. View highlights from our last Festival of Ideas here.
The focus of the event will be high-potential third sector innovations that personalise mental health support, including but not limited to:
- Social networks, mentoring and peer support
- Tailored provision for minority groups
- Bespoke support for those with more serious mental illness
- Smarter responses to crises
- Prevention and early-recognition, including for young people
The event will bring together leading innovators, commissioners and investors to meet one another, learn about and critique these innovations and work together to develop them.
So, if you have a fledgling proposal or an innovative project in this space, we want to hear from you. Let us know your solution to personalising mental health support and the very best ideas will receive a Festival invitation. It could be just what you need to develop and strengthen your work:
- An opportunity to meet potential collaborators from the third sector
- A chance to work with commissioners, investors and other experts to develop and improve your plans
- An opportunity to develop alliances and partnerships that could be critical to the success of your innovation
To respond to this Call for Ideas, simply fill in this short template presentation to explain your innovation. As an example, here is a completed template describing Innovation Exchange. Please send your completed presentation in an email to Raj Cheema, including ‘call for ideas’ in the subject.
Please note that this presentation may be used on the day and that the submission deadline is Thursday, 20th August at 12.00pm.
Don’t give your idea away, but don’t keep it to yourself. Help it to fly with Innovation Exchange and the North West JIP.
About Innovation Exchange and Festivals of Ideas
The third and public sectors are teeming with great ideas, but too few of them change the world. Innovators, investors and commissioners often lack each others’ phone numbers and the capacity and incentive to collaborate. As a result, innovations may get a start, but struggle for the connections and resources to sustain or scale. Innovation Exchange’s Festivals of Ideas exist to tackle this problem. These high-quality one-day innovation events connect public sector commissioners with the most innovative leaders of third sector organisations large and small to identify opportunities for innovation and build alliances around ideas. Networking, workshops and open space sessions are combined to develop ideas with clearly-identified owners and next steps.
Innovation Exchange is a collaboration of the Innovation Unit, ACEVO and Headshift. It is primarily funded by the Cabinet Office, with sponsorship from NESTA and Department of Health.