The development of a creative work rehabilitation organisation

Overcrowding in British mental hospitals was a major service and political concern when the NHS was introduced in 1948. From 1959, a number of projects were initiated locally in Oxfordshire, based from Littlemore Hospital Oxford, to provide alternative accommodation, primarily for long-stay residents. Two NHS hostels were opened and a network of group homes was developed from 1963. These were administered through the hospital League of Friends and supported by the community psychiatric nursing service led by Helmut Leopoldt. From 1977 a separate local charity, Oxfordshire Mind, also provided supported housing for younger patients. These developments can be seen as an early local case study of the provision of non-hospital (supported) accommodation and other forms of support for people with long-term mental health problems.

“…The present article focuses on the first two questions, and the last is addressed in the article on Restore in this issue ( Leach, Agulnik and Armstrong, 2023 ).…”

Section: Confronting the Challengementioning

confidence: 99%

The development of supported mental health accommodation and community psychiatric nursing in Oxfordshire

Hall

2022

“…Core elements of this can be discerned in the creation of Restore (an acronym for Rehabilitation Services Trust for Oxfordshire Re-employment), an independent voluntary sector organisation with charitable status. Its serendipitous origins arose from Mandelbrote’s continuing communication with Ernest Gruenberg, described in an article in this issue (Leach, Agulnik and Armstrong, 2023). Restore initially made use of unused hospital buildings and land at Littlemore Hospital, but moved in stages to be entirely based in the community and to provide a range of recovery workshop settings as well as employment advice and training in Oxfordshire.…”

Section: Influence On Personal and Professional Developmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Innovation in mental health care: Bertram Mandelbrote, the Phoenix Unit and the therapeutic community approach

Millard¹,

Agulnik²,

Armstrong

et al. 2022

Self Cite

Bertram Mandelbrote was Physician Superintendent and Consultant Psychiatrist at Littlemore Hospital in Oxford from 1959 to 1988. A humane pragmatist rather than theoretician, Mandelbrote was known for his facilitating style of leadership and working across organisational boundaries. He created the Phoenix Unit, an innovative admission unit run on therapeutic community lines which became a hub for community outreach. Material drawn from oral histories and witness seminars reflects the remarkably unstructured style of working on the Phoenix Unit and the enduring influence of Mandelbrote and fellow consultant Benn Pomryn’s styles of leadership. Practices initiated at Littlemore led to a number of innovative services in Oxfordshire. These innovations place Mandelbrote as a pioneer in social psychiatry and the therapeutic community approach.

“…The nature of his influence is the subject of the first of these articles (Millard et al, 2023). The next paper describes innovations in the linked fields of non-hospital supported accommodation and of community psychiatric nursing (Hall, 2023), followed by another on the development of a creative work rehabilitation organization (Leach, Agulnik and Armstrong, 2023). A final article tries to address the historiography more directly, looking at how chance events occurring in a given regulatory culture can lead to the creation of a fertile setting in which institutional innovations can become established and flourish (Armstrong and Agulnik, 2023).…”

Section: The Untidy Backstage Of Institutional Innovation In Psychiatrymentioning

confidence: 99%

The processes and context of innovation in mental healthcare: Oxfordshire as a case study

Hall

Armstrong

Agulnik³

et al. 2022

Self Cite

This article introduces the four following articles and the Classic Text. They describe the development of a sequence of innovative local mental health services in Oxfordshire, and explore the processes of innovation, led by the humane pragmatism practised by Dr Bertram Mandelbrote, who was Physician Superintendent at Littlemore Hospital in Oxford from 1959 to 1988. The articles describe emerging patterns of therapeutic community practice, and trace the events leading to a set of discrete service developments outside the hospital. Together, they suggest a positive role for chance in these developments, and a focus on the then prevailing national and local regulatory culture. The Classic Text by David Millard provides an overview of the origins of the therapeutic community movement.