Tools for Recovery

“While recovery may be a unique and personal journey, none of us follow it in isolation.  Recovery planning must therefore consider the needs of our family and friends, and our community….Work can then begin to ensure that carers have the information and support that we need to be a ‘fellow traveller’ in the recovery of the person we care for. We must also become experts in our own journeys of recovery”.

Recovery a carer’s perspective (Machin & Repper, 2013)

There have been a number of tools developed to help carers think about their own recovery and wellbeing including:

Wellness Planning for Carers (WRAP- Wellness Recovery Action Planning) is a tool first developed by Mary Ellen Copeland, an author, educator and mental health recovery advocate from the USA.

A Personal Health and Wellbeing Plan for Family, Friends and Carers – published by ImROC, the Implementing Recovery through Organisational Change programme. These are similar in principle to the WRAP plans but can be completed outside of a group setting.

The Outcomes Star

The “Outcomes Star” was originally developed in 2003 by Joy MacKeith and Sara Burns (Triangle Consulting Social Enterprise ltd) as a tool to measure outcomes and progress towards an individual’s recovery goals.

Since 2003, a whole range of stars have been developed, each slightly different, to meet the needs of a variety of service users (from children’s services through to long term physical conditions).

Find out more about the whole range of Outcome Stars by Triangle (Triangle Consulting Social Enterprise ltd) The link takes you to a preview to all the Stars on offer.

Find out more about The Mental Health Recovery Star for those people using mental health services.

The new Carers Star specifically looks at recovery for carers and the areas of:

1. Health
2. The caring role
3. Managing at home
4. Time for yourself
5. How you feel
6. Finances
7. Work

The Centre for Mental Health website has a wide range of useful recovery material

Other useful documents for recovery include:

Making Recovery A Reality (454.0 KiB)

– Policy Paper – Sainsbury Centre for Mental Health; G.Shepherd, J Boardman & M Slade (2008)

Implementing Recovery - A Methodology for Organisational Change (425.6 KiB)

 – Policy paper – Sainsbury Centre for Mental Health, G.Shepherd, J Boardman & M Slade (2009)

100 Ways to support recovery; A guide for mental health professionals – Rethink report by Mike Slade (2013) – this linked pagehas a download link.