Fiona Brown
Communications Officer
Jami and their IROC journey
Jami is a mental health charity that provides community-based services to the Jewish community across London.
Support is delivered from four locality hubs, a social enterprise warehouse and Headroom Café, a coffee shop bringing mental health to the high street.
In 2014 Jami launched a recovery strategy, a key element of this was to train all staff to use appropriate recovery outcome measures. I•ROC was chosen for this purpose due to the holistic approach, accessible language and appealing design.
A pilot of the tool in one of the four hub teams soon began to demonstrate the value in I•ROC, not only for measuring personal recovery but also in adding value to the work being carried out.
I•ROC provides a framework, promotes meaningful and focused conversation and provides a structure to review progress.
Jami and I•ROC have come a long way and there has been a wider impact than expected. The tool is now integrated across the organisation and is the pathway for clients through the service.
Implementing I•ROC required a shift in culture, attitudes and ways of working, it has become the shared ‘language’ of a multi skilled team. Services are being developed in line with the I•ROC indicators and the existing services matched with them. This has created a more consistent and joined up service for our clients.
One of the most valuable and well received ways of engaging people has been to provide personal recovery and service wide outcomes.
Embedding I•ROC has involved training with regular refresher sessions, team reflections and devising new processes and pathways. Additionally, one of the most valuable and well received ways of engaging people has been to provide personal recovery and service wide outcomes. This serves to validate work and promotes staff involvement in service outcomes and development.
The voluntary sector is continuously being challenged to report meaningful outcomes to funders. In a move to become less medical and prescriptive and to focus instead on personal recovery measures we lose some of the standard language and benchmarks that organisations are looking for to see the impact of their funds. Finding a way of translating what we do is an ongoing challenge, however I•ROC and its growing evidence base goes towards supporting this process.
