The Hamlet Trust Network
Hamlet works with over 40 Network Members in 14 countries throughout Central and Eastern Europe and Central Asia, developing self-help and advocacy for mental health groups. More…

Pathways to Policy - involving users to create change
The Pathways to Policy programme aims to enable NGOs to work with other local mental health stakeholders to have a greater influence on local mental health policies, practices and procedures. More…

Social Work and Developing Mental Health NGOs
Developing a strong social work sector provides support for the more vulnerable groups in society and contributes to civil society. More…

Social Enterprise
In Hamlet's network, social enterprises are designed to ensure that people who have experienced mental health problems are able to work and earn an income in a sustainable way. More…

Pathways to Policy – involving users to create change

Over 3 years Hamlet’s Pathways to Policy programme, funded by the Community Fund, proved a strong example of Hamlet successfully breaking down barriers.

The challenge was to enable service users and carers, initially in 6 countries, to play a meaningful role in mental health policymaking. Hamlet Network Member Organisations (NMOs) responded by motivating a cross-section of local stakeholders to work together in regular local policy forums, under the leadership of people with mental health problems. Filling the policy vacuum with positive action, not waiting for someone else to do something.

The success of this Hamlet initiative demonstrates that confident, proactive organisations can make a real difference to the development of mental health policy in their countries. Service users work as equal partners with other stakeholders such as lawyers, journalists, politicians and health professionals, and are invaluable participants in this process of political and civil change.

Project outcomes include:

• International Co-operation: Hamlet is now included as consultant to the World Health Organisation’s International Mental Health Policies planning body to ensure users views are represented.
• Instituting change: six ‘local policy forums’ established in Estonia, Bosnia, Romania, Armenia, Kyrgyz Republic and India. Four continue working at local or national level, hosted by Hamlet NMOs .
• Collaboration: over 2000 people in six countries now involved in mental health policy design and implementation.
• Breaking down barriers: in Romania a partnership with a local radio station enabled users to tell of their own experiences in the psychiatric system, so raising awareness of mental health in the local community.
• Genuine improvements: forum work is leading to improvements in people’s lives in the short term, and will offer hope to thousands more for years to come.

“Having our views heard makes a huge difference” A mental health service user on the Pathways to Policy programme. “Working together we really can make changes that improve people’s lives” A social worker from Estonia

STOP PRESS: Attendees at the conference included delegates from Hamlet NMO Alternativa in Albania, who expressed great enthusiasm for the project. Hamlet has recently secured funding to launch a pilot of the Pathways to Policy programme will be lanched in Albania in autumn 2005.

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Social Work and Developing Mental Health NGOs

New project begins in Georgia
In November 2002 Hamlet began a project in Georgia in co-operation with Global Initiative on Psychiatry (GIP) designed to support the development of NGOs and their services. The project, funded by CORDAID (Netherlands) and Miserior (Germany), also contributed to the reform of psychiatric services through training professionals and supporting the Georgian Ministry of Health in developing a more effective policy infrastructure.

Small grants have enabled 6 NGOs to develop a range of activities including

• Developing the policy template that is part of the World Health Organisation Country Profiling process.
• Developing new ways of working with older people with mental health problems living at home.
• Developing a media and information campaign for young people on drug and alcohol issues.
• Training doctors in mental health issues
• Enabling the user group The Union of Users and Ex-Users of Georgia to develop a number of employment opportunities.
• Taking the advocacy project into other regions of the country and looking at supporting people and their families at home.

In addition, the programme will be offering two short training courses, one on social work teaching and methodology and the other for professionals already working in the field, especially nurses and doctors.

Also in November 2002 a conference was organised by the Georgian Association for Mental Health (GAMH) which was attended by a wide range of professionals, users, and representatives of the Ministry of Health. This event was a great achievement for GAMH, as it was the first truly interdisciplinary public conference to be held in Georgia and represented a great leap forward.

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Social Enterprise

Social enterprise and mental health employment projects
In Hamlet's network, social enterprises are designed to ensure that people who have experienced mental health problems are able to work and earn an income in a sustainable way. This is why the focus is on running enterprises or businesses, not projects. The enterprise must go on generating income to continue to employ people, teach them skills that they may be able to use in other forms of employment, use the talents that people have and expand to enable more people to benefit.

Social enterprises focus not the generation of private profit but on responding to social need or making positive social change, often employing those whose opportunities for employment might otherwise be limited. The profit generated by a social enterprise is reinvested directly into the business to the benefit of the people running it and the community at large.

This approach to alleviating poverty is seen by many as more constructive than "integrated employment", where the employment of people with mental health problems is often seen as a token gesture for people are often given the repetitive, mundane tasks. Social enterprises run wholly or largely by users of mental health services are able to fight such discrimination (or even bypass it altogether), and often have a stronger voice in working to influence social policy.

The work of Hamlet Trust's Network Members includes areas such as:

• Workers' co-operatives selling organic food and ceramics to local communities
• Cafés
• Laundries - with specific contracts for hospitals (Estonia), sports clubs etc
• Food production and delivery services - baking special cakes, delivering pack lunches, making business lunches, catering for conferences (Ukraine)
• Computer training and services
• Cleaning services -both office and domestic
• Greetings card manufacturers
• Building affordable housing or restoring housing
• Urban and rural regeneration and development
• City farms

While the majority of enterprises which employ people with disabilities invariably require some kind of start-up funding, successful enterprises can move within 2 to 3 years to being fully independent, sustainable, flourishing businesses.

To enable these organisations to further develop their social enterprises, Hamlet Trust organised a Regional Networking Event in Kyiv, Ukraine. Representatives from Hamlet's Network Members Eastern Europe and Central Asia met to exchange experiences of running social enterprises, with further input provided by trainers from the UK, including Geof Cox of Economic Partnerships, a social enterprise consultancy organisation.

This is what some of the participants of the Regional Networking Event on Social Enterprise had to say…

"It's most interesting that users can create successful enterprises which can compete with 'normal' ones" "It broadened my knowledge about possibilities to create real working places for different users to meet their needs". "The most interesting thing was to discover that social enterprises can really be profitable/sustainable" "It brought alive projects I had read about. It brought out the amazing vitality and diversity of the Hamlet network."

Participants at the workshop in Kyiv hard at work

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