Stronger Together: I.ROC's European Journey

Stephen Finlayson

For European Mental Health Week 2026, Stephen Finlayson (our Head of Innovation & Improvement) reflects on how working together with colleagues across Europe has helped I.ROC grow.

This week is European Mental Health Week, and the 2026 theme is Stronger Together. Partnerships with colleagues across Europe have long been part of our work in Penumbra Mental Health, and this week we want to celebrate some of them. A key one has been the way that I.ROC has spread from Scotland to be used widely by our organisational partners in Europe.

When Penumbra began developing I.ROC in 2007, the concern was a practical one: the tools available to measure progress in mental health were largely built around symptoms and deficits, with little focus on what mattered most to the person.

People wanted something different.

An approach that recognised that a good life is more complex than simply reducing symptoms linked to a diagnosis. I.ROC is, first and foremost, a conversation. Its 12 indicators, grouped within four domains of HOPE (Home, Opportunity, People, Empowerment), provide a foundation for that conversation and help identify what really matters; what recovery looks like for each person. I.ROC was built with people who use Penumbra’s services across Scotland, refined through their feedback and validated in partnership with Abertay University.

Our long-standing membership of Mental Health Europe has brought real value to Penumbra, strengthening our practice through shared learning, widening our partnerships and giving us a stronger voice in shaping mental health services.

Through the Mental Health Europe platform we shared the HOPE framework and I.ROC with partners across Europe, supported them to adapt and translate it and learned a great deal from how they put it into practice. Today, I.ROC is in active use in over 60 organisations across the UK and Europe. The I.ROC wellbeing approach is now used in a range of in-patient and community settings worldwide by community nurses and clinical psychologists working with people with complex trauma, and many 3rd sector organisations and recovery colleges.

Nowhere has that journey been more striking than in the Netherlands. A growing community of researchers and clinicians at Pro Persona, Indigo, MET ggz, GGZ Drenthe, GGz Breburg, Lentis and others have hugely added to the practice and academic evidence base for I.ROC and the HOPE framework.

A few highlights:

In 2022, Beckers and colleagues published the first Dutch validation in BMC Psychiatry, demonstrating I.ROC’s reliability in low-intensity community mental health care.
In 2023, Sportel and colleagues validated the effectiveness of I.ROC for people living with schizophrenia.
In 2025, Metz and colleagues published a structural validity study using I.ROC data from 8,635 people across five Dutch organisations. As far as we are aware, this is the largest single I.ROC analysis published anywhere.

Beyond the Netherlands, I.ROC has been translated and validated in Spain and is used in Belgium, Finland, Czechia and more.

The journey is ongoing.

Penumbra is proud to champion recovery-focused approaches to mental health in Scotland and across Europe. We are part of a movement that believes we must focus on the outcomes that matter most to people, that hope underpins progress, and that mental health support must be grounded in human rights.

Thank you, Stephen.

If you’d like more information on I.ROC, please visit the official website here.

Alternatively, email hello@irocwellbeing.com