Consumer Consultancy is a development organisation with an interest in disability issues.
- We believe in the grassroots ownership of our projects, information and capital
- We adopt a participatory research approach and consider that people are learners and educators in their own right, rather than simply academic ‘subjects’.
- We believe that people with disabilities deserve needs-based, personalised support systems, that understand and promote hospitality.
- We believe that the charitable model is counterproductive. All to often it has served to separate people and resources from real community - unless the charity is wholly managed by the people who benefit from it’s services.
- Therefore agencies who raise money on behalf of other people should pass the majority of the funds they receive to the people that they claim to represent.
- We believe that advocacy services should be managed by consumers.
- We consider consumers to be people first – and so should not be considered a part of ‘the voluntary sector’
- We hold that that people should be enabled to take risks, and that ‘failure’ is an essential part of learning
- We consider only those services that do not involve coercion to qualify as a ‘treatment’ or essential support.
Our Philosophy
Our vision for the future transcends the tradition of stigma and marginalisation. We see this as a culture – despite the ”user involvement” rhetoric, which is characterised by power relationships that allow us to debate – but not to compete as equals on some of the most crucial issues that affect our lives.
This tradition provides some individuals with wealth, security and power at the expense of legitimising the vulnerability and second-class status of others. It also allows an unaccountable professional guild the absolute right to treat others after first granting themselves powers to assess their “deficiencies”. We consider that one of the social consequences of this activity is that it contributes toward the erosion of the essential fabric of community life - thereby ensuring the failure of “care in the community” and provoking a subsequent backlash against mental health patients from society as a whole.
In contrast, we now see our own future as one of social integration, political and social partnerships and a personal experience of belonging to something other than a service network. In order to achieve a life beyond the usual service frameworks, we need to rely less upon them and focus more attention on building our community’s capacity to adapt to all its members – as well as the capacity of all people to manage their label, condition or handicap.
Community Development
We explore how neighbourhood regeneration, more creative employment prospects, quality housing, appropriate training and ethical social enterprises can promote improved mental health through an enhanced support for our self-sufficiency, self-management and sense of inclusion.
Recovery
What is an individual recovering from at any point in time? For example, in addition to mental illness, we may be experiencing the effects of poverty, trauma, anxiety, family break-up, internalised stigma, stress, grief and/or spiritual demoralisation. Appropriate support in these areas can reduce the triggers that create emotional distress and in turn create the conditions for personal recovery.
Recovery is a broader concept than treatment because as it can demand both a healing and a transformation of a person’s life. We believe it is possible to recover without formal treatment, and also that everyone’s recovery process is entirely unique. It is not a necessary part of the recovery process to accept that you have an illness of some sort. However, learning to understand what the problem actually is – particularly in a way that allows us to take responsibility for our own behaviour, is an important part of the process.
At this stage in the process we can benefit from coaching or mentoring from others who are in touch with their own recovery process. All too often such valuable resources are lost to us by professional gatekeepers who claim a different expertise, along with the right to control our crisis.
Recovery can mean being completely symptom free, but it is just as possible to be in recovery while also using medication and formal mental health services for temporary support.
We consider that professionals need then to strive to anticipate how every personal recovery process may cause conflict with their own therapeutic prejudices – and learn how to search for a sense of solidarity with each individual that they encourage to enter into a therapeutic relationship with them.
We believe that in recovery an authentic solidarity or personal bonding in its turn leads to a sense of mutual liberation. The experience of solidarity within the relationship – i.e. simply having someone knowledgeable and supportive beside you in a crisis, contrasts sharply with the control and conformity to the norms of others required of more traditional treatments.
We reject any relationship, which appears to suggest that power, dominance and subjugation are prerequisites of any successful treatment regime.
Activism
Activism can be very constructive – it encourages us to reject a victim status and get more realistic by understanding what’s happening around us – for example there are budgets, political commitments, and public policies that we can stay in tune with and utilise just as well as anyone else can whatever their expertise, professional position or role in life may be.
The better we understand what’s going on around us the more likely it is that we will be considered real players in mental health and the more we will be able to put ourselves in a position where we can start to commission as well as simply use mental health services.
