About Develop

The award-winning Developing Valued Lifestyles Partnership (Develop) is an informal partnership between all the organisations that make up Bromley Mental Health Services, service users and carers and local mainstream organisations. Develop is working to make social inclusion a reality in Bromley for people with mental health problems. For over 6 years Develop members have been building capacity across organisations like Bromley MyTime and Liberata, to enable staff in these organisations to offer local people with mental health issues welcoming and supportive access to ordinary opportunity. This has been achieved by sharing expertise, resources and network contacts.

Develop co-ordinates networks that build supportive pathways into eight life domains. So far we have WorkNET, ArtsNET, LearningNET, NeighbourhoodNET, SportsNET and FaithNET. Julian Palmisciano (ACT team) represents Develop on the sports disability panel within Bromley MyTime and Jan Lovett (Credo) has a seat on the Bromley Arts Panel. Diane Diamond (Community Links volunteer bureau) has recently obtained funding for supported volunteering and Matrin Gill has set-up a virtual e-group to look at disseminating information about welfare benefits and related financial issues. In due course the e-group may consider developing this into MoneyNET but in the meantime they have access to all the information stored on the Money pages of www.developbromley.com.

There are also practitioner forums that support socially inclusive practices such as recovery, person-centred approaches, community bridge building, self-directed supports such as direct payments and mental health awareness training.

The Develop partners are:

This website is designed to be a unique resource for anyone living or working in Bromley or nearby to access information about:

• Services and organisations that are taking a real interest in social inclusion, and how they are making themselves more accessible, welcoming and supportive to people with mental health problems. Their details can be downloaded directly from the site and printed out as handy leaflets.
• How to make your service, organisation, club or community group more socially inclusive (and get free promotion about this work on the Develop website, as well as getting access to training and free social inclusion tools, policy and research materials).
• Topical issues surrounding social inclusion and mental health via Develop News (updated and distributed via email once a fortnight), and how to join in the debate using our discussion boards.
• Local and national events can be found in the life domain based listing pages and there is an overall events calendar with details of courses, conferences, training days, focus/discussion groups, meetings etc. taking place in Bromley and around the UK.

Have your say about social inclusion

If you are working in this field or are a respresentative of a local organisation (please see the "Join Develop" page for more details) you can join Develop, giving you access to our meeting minutes and discussion boards where you can have your say. Additional benefits include:

• Free publicity about the work your organisation, group or team is doing to be more inclusive.
• A variety of discussion boards where you can access/share a wealth of local expertise and knowledge.
• Details of meetings relevant to you, your work, employees, customers or members.
• Local Stories - peoples' own accounts of living life to the full despite mental health problems, overcoming barriers and dealing with discrimination, being supported with their recovery, and stories of how local service providers and community organisations have have set up groups or worked in new and exciting partnerships, and all the information you need to enable you to do something similar.

If you do not represent a local group, but you use services or are an unpaid carer of someone with mental health problems, you can also access most of this site. For your information this site is closely linked with one of our partner organsations which specialises in promoting the voice of people using services. Bromley Advocacy Project's Service User Involvement Team (SUITe) have a dedicated discussion board called "Your Say" where you would be welcome to air your views, ask questions of other people also using services and their associates, provide handy hints and tips and join in the debate.

Other relevant national sites: