Equal Footing: Collaborative practices in mental health care and substance abuse services as multifaceted partnerships

In this period focus has been on data collection and dissemination of results. The competence groups is established, and we have had 3 meetings. There have been 2 meetings in the steering group. The collection of data is in good progress. 1) Focus groups with professionals, is done, and 2) individual interviews with service users is done. 3) Focus groups with family members done. 4) The research fellow Knut Tore Sælør, has developed the project on Experiences of hope in collaborative practices in co-occurring mental health and substance abuse problems: a phenomenological hermeneutic study. Individual interviews with service users are done, and individual interviews with professionals are to be done by nov 1. 5) The research assistant Randi Sem, has developed a PhD project Title: Belonging and citizenship for young people experiencing co-occurring mental health and substance abuse problems: experiences and opportunities. This part of the project has been approved by the Regional Committee for Medical Research Ethics and Norwegian Social Science Data Service. Based on the action part of this action research project, a need for knowledge development within the municipality's documentation systems in health- and welfare organisations emerged. This study has been included in the research portfolio, thus the planned quantitative study has been postponed. Furthermore, we have developed 'Recovery Communities' in Asker municipality including some more persons in addition to the research team. The Recovery Communities have two main objectives: (1) to facilitate recovery-oriented community activities and support to promote the persons' recovery journeys.(2) to strengthen knowledge about recvoery as well as strengthen recovery-orientation of existing services. Visiting Brunel University London: April 2014 Ness, Sælær and Semb visited our collaborating University Brunel University, UK for 5 days. We had presentation and discussed the research project with researchers there. all presentations and publications are written in the publication information section.

Mental health and substance abuse services in Norway have undergone many changes, with the main objective of providing care and treatment within the persons home and social environments. A guiding principle has been promoting person centeredness and recov ery. However, there remain a number of service users with serious clinical and social needs that are poorly met. In 2010 The Coordination Reform was passed and a major argument was that service users needs for coordinated services are not taken care of in a satisfactory way. A new and more central role for the municipality in collaborative practices was also stated, as well as strengthening service users´ participation in service development and more systematic efforts in describing good patient pathways. Persons with co-occurring mental illness and substance use disorder are often referred to as complex and difficult to help, and historically, they have fallen between different treatment services. The majority of literature today recommends an integrativ e service approach; however, there is still a lack of in-depth knowledge about various aspects of promoting service integration, good patient pathways, and recovery-oriented services in the context of the municipality. We derived our research focus and r esearch aims by identifying key issues that impact on the transformation processes implicit in the Coordination Reform. The study will be carried out in Asker municipality, with an action research methodology that combines a qualitative component applying a co-operative inquiry and a quantitative component applying a questionnaire survey. The results from these studies will contribute to a) in-depth knowledge about patterns of and attitudes of collaboration by the user group, the family members and the se rvice provider group; (b) a composite model for collaboration and coordination in mental health and substance abuse services; and (c) transferability of the model developed to other settings in the municipality.