July 2010
"Getting Ready for Work"
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KEY WE WAY
A Peer Run Recovery Service
Wellink is very proud of its Key We Way service. What makes us proud is the feedback from people who have stayed as guests of the service. In saying how proud we are we also acknowledge the efforts and the tribulations of a number of the excellent staff who have worked there as the service has found its feet and addressed issues that have arisen.
Key We Way is known locally as one of three Recovery Houses. Whereas Key We Way is a peer led service, the other two Recovery Houses operate with different service models. Wellink entered into this new service knowing that there were no prototypes to learn from and that we had to forge our own path. From the day Key We Way opened we have been keen to conduct evaluations of the service and so we contributed strongly to the CCDHB led work to design an evaluation framework. Our intention was to record the outcomes for guests and to use the information to tell us ‘what works’ and from that to inform improvements to the service. Unfortunately the delays in completing the evaluation framework for all of the recovery houses means that we have lost the opportunity to record and follow the progress of people who entered Key We Way in its first 3 years.
In those 3 years the occupancy levels in the Recovery Houses have tended to fluctuate and that appears to be related to changes of staff in the clinical services and also in Key We Way. We very much regret that the future of the Recovery Houses cannot now be assured due to the lack of reliable measures of effectiveness or other service evaluation. It would be a shame if the sector lost a valuable service option due to a lack of evaluative research and it would be equally shameful if the sector continued to fund an ineffective service due to a lack of evaluation research.
Capital & Coast District Health Board is to be commended for its vision in establishing some alternative acute service models that led to the Recovery House models. While evaluation work is costly, we believe that it’s incumbent upon funders and providers to properly evaluate new service initiatives such as the Recovery Houses. Wellink is determined to find better ways of working with people who are in acute distress and we’ll continue to seek funding for evaluative activity and publish the findings to contribute to the sector’s pool of knowledge.
These two reports address different aspects of the peer led Key We Way service. Both reports take a case study approach to evaluating evidence of the value of this service model and supplement the utilization data that is available to the DHB funder. Meanwhile there is no doubt that peer led services in times of acute distress are appreciated by the people who used Key We Way. The reports present the evidence for this conclusion, supporting the emerging international evidence of the effectiveness of peer led services and also raise questions that merit further study of this valuable service option.
We welcome you to share these reports with others and to share your feedback with us.
To read or download Key We Way - The Real Story
To read or download Characteristics of Good Peer Support
