After years of research, we are excited to finally share with you the Walk the Talk toolkit - a toolkit for transforming services and systems in mental health!
This toolkit is suitable for organisations that provide a variety of services but also have adult clientele living with mental health challenges or illnesses. By the end, organisations that follow the toolkit will have selected, planned for and implemented a new recovery-oriented innovation.
As a concept, mental health recovery challenges traditional ways of viewing and supporting those with mental health challenges or illnesses. Mental health recovery shifts the focus beyond “curing” individual symptoms and seeks to help clients live a satisfying, hopeful and fulfilling life despite obstacles they might face related to their mental health. We drew on recovery principles to develop a unique, collaborative and “bottom-up” planning process that gives everyone a seat at the table!
How does the toolkit work?
Walk the Talk is grounded in implementation science and draws from the Mental Health Commission of Canada’s Guidelines for Recovery-Oriented Practice. Your organisation will be guided to implement Chapter 6 of these guidelines, which is about transforming systems and services.
Implementing guidelines isn’t easy! Guidelines provide a lot of valuable information, but turning them into concrete actions can be challenging. Our toolkit is designed to help you implement the guidelines through a facilitated process.
It is designed to be used by a person designated in your organisation to be a facilitator. Rather than being told what to implement, the facilitator uses the toolkit materials to guide you through a process that helps your organisation make its own decisions on what to implement from the guidelines. This process is divided into three sections:
Section 1- Establishing an implementation team. The implementation team is a group responsible for learning about the guidelines, selecting a recovery-oriented innovation and planning for its implementation. The facilitator is responsible for recruiting implementation team members from all key stakeholder groups including service users, service providers, family members, managers and knowledge users.
Section 2-Conducting the 12-meeting planning process. Walk the Talk provides the facilitator with all the materials they will need to complete 12 implementation team planning meetings. These meetings are full of engaging consensus-based activities that guide the implementation team to select a sub-guideline, choose a guideline-related innovation and prepare an implementation plan.
Section 3- Ongoing implementation coaching. The facilitator will meet regularly with the implementation team to provide tailored coaching. The aim of coaching sessions is to help keep the implementation team on track with their plan, problem-solve, and ensure recovery and implementation principles are kept at the forefront of the team’s work.
By the end, your organisation will have implemented a new recovery-oriented innovation! This collaborative work also builds capacity in your organisation as the process used can be applied to the implementation of future innovations in your organisation!
Now is your chance to get involved.
As part of our launch initiative, we are offering the Early Adopter Program - an exciting opportunity where you could be one of the first organisations to use our online toolkit and receive exclusive one-on-one coaching from the toolkit creators.
To get started, visit walkthetalktoolkit.ca for more information or contact us directly at info@walkthetalktoolkit.ca.
Supported by funding from:
