ABSTRACT
People employed within community mental health services have chosen a career that is immensely challenging and potentially rewarding and enriching. Their work to support people in moving from crisis and despair towards a renewed sense of strength, independence and well-being should be creative and fulfilling. Community mental health professionals, particularly social workers and community psychiatric nurses, often experience low morale, emotional exhaustion and ‘burnout’. This chapter draws on the study of three NHS trusts that are seeking some kinds of changes in relation to employment, on the experience of supporting those attempting to find new ways of working and on the work of other writers and researchers, to look at some of the concerns and achievements of community-based mental health staff, their service users and senior managers. The three study sites, described as sites A, B and C, were chosen to facilitate exploration of different approaches to increasing service users’ access to vocational expertise.
