Service users’ experiences of recovery under the 2008 Care Programme Approach

Service users in the UK have welcomed the fact that both professional bodies and the government in this country have endorsed recovery approaches. As recovery approaches have developed, however, quite a few service users have voiced the following concern: that mental health professionals and service users may both be talking of ‘recovery’ but may mean different things by it. A number of service users think, for example, that service user concepts of recovery have been re-interpreted in an essentially medical sense. In addition, service users from marginalised communities have raised the fact that descriptions of recovery may not fit their ideas of it.

An issue for various service users who access services under the 2008 Care Programme Approach is the link between this Approach and coercive elements of the Mental Health Act 2007; as people who are considered to be particularly at risk, or sometimes a risk to others, they are more likely to be subject to the coercive parts of this Act. They find this link contradictory to the rights-based ethos which is central to most service user concepts of recovery. In addition, quite a few service users think that the growing focus on risk-assessment and risk-management within the Care Programme Approach is at odds with the holistic approaches that they view as important for recovery. The above concerns have been particularly high for a number of service users from black and minority ethnic communities who are over-represented within compulsory services.