Coordinators wherever possible. Start in This is achieved through reviews and tutorials. We are delighted to report that, this year, good Manchester practice standards have been set Activities report Dec 05 – Dec 06 and successfully achieved across the team in tutorial note-keeping and feedback. Note: In the following document, the word ‘students’ refers to people using Start’s services. All artworks used in the report are made at Start by students and staff Care, treatment, support and prevention Our activity programmes and project work are structured to support, protect and progress recovery, and to complement other health and social care interventions. We work within CPA goal plans. Interventions show detailed attention to each Sessions at Start student. In supervision, staff talk All studios continue to operate in depth about each student, and busy and structured programmes forward plan around these of creative activity. discussions to ensure best practice is achieved. For the last year, possibly due to some difficulties with the new referrals system, referrals have been slower in coming through to us, leaving some gaps in timetables. We have grasped this as an opportunity to pilot the following new groups and initiatives: • Intensive groups in arts, communication skills and change-management, with Brain Gym exercises - run jointly between artists and Start’s OT • Group in mainstream setting of All student goals at Start are set in Whitworth Art Gallery - run negotiation with students, and jointly between artists and additionally their Care Start’s OT reproduction on their new website. They are working in partnership with Start to help clients explore the theme of ‘Attitudes to mental health research’, from which we will take inspiration to develop a body of works. • The Trust’s Kingsleigh House CMHT team asked Start’s Horticulture Department to landscape their front gardens • Creative workshops on the at cost price. Start has used Edale Unit (Textiles and the request as a training Ceramics) opportunity for students • Creative workshops at Home • Start staff were commissioned Options (Photography, to develop an on-line mental Ceramics, Horticulture) health awareness training resource for artists, by Artsnet • Creative workshops at Toolkit Training Harpurhey Day Centre (Horticulture, Painting, Photography) Moving On: Building • Expanded opportunities for independence and reducing work experience for Start reliance step by step students at external events and The following progressive steps exhibitions have been achieved: • More than 15 students access Commissions studios independently, thus freeing up sessional space for Commissions teach students a new students range of transferable skills including time management, team • 13 students now work on their working, following a brief, roles creative activity independently and responsibilities, and quality at home control. Commissions form a small • A number of students have part of our sessional practice at been supported by Start OT to Start as part of our portfolio of travel to Start independently, projects in each studio. thus raising attendance levels • Birch Community Centre commissioned Start’s mosaics group to create a large-scale panel, which is currently nearing completion. • The Trust’s Research and Development Department has commissioned Start to produce a range of new artworks for run a short summer school on specialist skills. Benefits to Start students included widening of horizons, additional skills acquisition, management of change in working with a new staff member, and heightened confidence resulting from all these factors. • An ex-Start student, now volunteer in ceramics, developed and ran a successful • More than 10 students have 6 week course. This freed up sold work or had their work the Ceramics Artist to develop published photographically a different project for a new group of students. • Home Learning – a new home learning strategy is proving • 3 Start students are popular with Start’s students, successfully supporting Start some of whom have requested staff to run sessions in Start additional input from Start. To and other settings maximise service efficiency, instead of offering extra Intensive courses to progress sessions to these students, we students are encouraging them to work on structured homework With our new OT team member on projects in between sessions, board, the Start team has been with the option of calling their able to pilot 2 new courses for tutor if they need advice students, to help progress their skills and move them on to mainstream opportunities. Artists and Start’s OT are working side by side to provide specialised arts input that targets assessed needs within the student groups. 1. For students with complex support needs This course targets change- management skills, information processing, transferring skills from one medium to another, and social roles/skills. Progress is assessed through observation, and measuring • Visiting artists/volunteers - changes in a range of Visiting ceramics artist Jacqui communication skills. Brain Atkin was funded from staff Gym exercises are included, salary savings (unpaid leave) to and benefits to concentration and other skills are being monitored 2. For students with advanced skills who want to engage confidently with galleries This short course, now complete, targeted reflective and analytical skills, group working (roles and responsibilities), specialist arts practice skills, and specialist Home Options Service, the Edale gallery knowledge. Run in Unit and Harpurhey Day Centre partnership with staff at the have been much appreciated by Whitworth Art Gallery, this staff and patients, and have course has resulted in Start resulted in the production of students learning how to use photographic, ceramic and textile the gallery’s resources artworks for the corridors and independently – for example public spaces in these buildings. how to go behind the scenes of All in-reach work has been the gallery, and how to use the negotiated around shared goals. gallery website. The work has resulted in new referrals to Start’s services, plus successful voluntary work training Sessions in Acute and Community placements for advanced Start settings students. Running sessions in other settings Sessions have also provided not only extends the benefits of effective training for staff on creative activity to in-patients and these units in art skills, with a other Trust clients, but also offers view to continuing some arts a chance for Start students to help provision based around new prepare and run these sessions as techniques acquired, without training placements. Start’s support Blocks of sessions provided by staff and students from Start, for the Waiting List management • Our waiting lists are small and we try to keep waiting times to a minimum by using strategies such as appropriate signposting to alternative services, reorganising groups to accommodate additional students, use of volunteers or assistants to ease group pressures • To help us offer more opportunities to Trust clients, we are supporting a member of Benchmark to run a small responsibilities associated with woodwork group in our work basement woodwork studio • Several students at Start have obtained voluntary or paid work during the last year • Several students have succeeded in having their work accepted for exhibition in external exhibition groups. • One Start member was runner up in a regional arts competition run by the V & A College Several Start students are regularly accessing Adult Social inclusion outcomes Education accredited college courses, with Start’s support. including mental health Three students have successfully promotion engaged with full-time Further (for mental health promotion Education. activity see Appendix) Work and training • More than 20 supported work placement/training opportunities have been created by Start at the following events/venues: Salford University, Salford Art Gallery, Whitworth Art Gallery, RHS show Tatton Park, Studio 1, Harpurhey, Home Options, Start’s studios - Textiles, Painting, Photography, Ceramics and Horticulture. Placements varied from a single session to supporting or running a whole course of Mainstream and interagency workshops, and were in public partnerships settings, Trust settings and External exhibitions and events within Start’s studios. programmes that tackle stigma, • These work placements build promote positive images of students’ confidence and mental health, and mental health enable them to learn to handle self-care the real stresses and Whitworth Art Gallery Voyager's' health promotion messages have great potential • With viewing figures in excess for changing attitudes. I'm of 42000, the award-short- especially delighted that so listed exhibition ‘Now, many children have visited the Voyager’ established the exhibit as reaching this age Trust’s and Start’s reputation group is absolutely vital.” as an innovative service promoting positive images of • The exhibition was mental health through the arts. accompanied by a self-help Launched by Professor Aidan leaflet called ‘Do Something Halligan, Director of Clinical Creative – it’s good for your Governance for the NHS, it was mental health”, produced by described by him as “…leaving Start staff and students and a legacy behind it that people funded by the Manchester will remember long after it has Public Health Development finished…it is about hope, and Service. 15000 distributed that’s what all health care across Manchester