Visit to CARe Network members in Romania

At the beginning of the month of November, Pavel Rican, general coordinator, Jana Pluharikova Pomajzlova, head of the CARe Academy and Jean Pierre Wilken, chair of the CARe Network visited our CARe Network members in Romania.

We are grateful to Elena Pana, Ioana Pavel and Traian Purnichi to organize all the meetings.

After visiting TREPTE Psychosocial Center and Ana Aslan National Institute of Gerontology and Geriatrics we learned that despite the fact that Romanian mental health system is mainly hospital based, there are still people who believe that change is possible. They carry out personalised services to people with mental health issues and their families and are engaged in research.

We were also impressed by the work of the NGO Carusel, which runs, among others, a community centre in the city for people who are homeless or addicted, with many physical and mental problems. They also have a shelter for Ukrainian refugees. The director, Marian Ursan, is also working at the university, connecting students and research to the service, and bringing people with lived experience into the curriculum to share their experiences.

CARe Erasmus+ project

A number of member organisations of The CARe Network has successfully applied for EU Erasmus+ funds to enrich the training opportunities in our network. The project team consists of the Czech Centre for Mental Health Development, the Estonian Psychosocial Rehabilitation Association, Tartu University, Utrecht University of Applied Sciences and Windesheim University of Applied Sciences. We build on existing resources but also develop a new leadership programme. The results will be:

1. A training module introducing principles of and knowledge about mental health recovery and recovery-focused care. This includes basic knowledge about personal recovery processes, recovery factors, experiential knowledge and principles of recovery-focused care.

2. A training module educating professionals with different educational and experiential backgrounds in basic competencies to deliver recovery-focused services.

3. A training module for service leaders. This module focuses on the development of community-based services, like outreach teams, supported living and supported employment. And on the role of service leaders in the implementation of recovery-focused care.

4. A train-the-trainer programme for educators. This module supports educators to become specialist trainers in recovery and mental health service development.

The coming three years, this project will give a boost to our activities, offering training opportunities to professionals, experts-by-experience and service leaders in a number of countries. The funds also enable us to organise one or two conferences.

Ukraine

The CARe Network offers its support and training opportunities to mental health professionals working in Ukraine and with refugees from Ukraine abroad.

In October 2023, our general coordinator Pavel Rican attended the First Mental Health Forum in Kyiv. You can read the event press release here: https://ukraine.un.org/en/250300-amidst-war-ukraine%E2%80%99s-first-mental-health-forum-hosts-hundreds-kyiv

Under the umbrella of WHO, mobile teams that were introduced since 2016, are offering care in community for people with mental health problems. WHO and the Ukrainian government have launched a roadmap that foresees not only responding to the current war situation, but also envisages to create better mental health services in the future.

Currently we are exploring opportunities to offer training in psychosocial support in the framework of the Mental Health for Ukraine project (MH4U).