Case Study
Glasgow Anti-Stigma Partnership
Developing a regional anti-stigma strategy
About the initiative
The Glasgow Anti-Stigma Partnership (GASP) has brought together over 100 partners from different sectors (public, voluntary, arts) to tackle stigma and discrimination. It combines community development approaches with actions to address the organisational and structural factors that perpetuate stigma and discrimination and works in key settings, including schools, workplaces, universities, services and with specific population groups (Black and minority ethnic communities, later life population, LGBT community).
The partnership also supported the development of the Scottish Mental Health Arts and Film Festival.
Involving ‘see me’
GASP is run by a management group comprising the main partners, including Greater Glasgow and Clyde NHS, Glasgow City Council, the Scottish Association for Mental Health, Glasgow Association for Mental Health, the Mental Health Foundation, the Positive Mental Attitudes Programme and ‘see me’. Each programme area also has a steering group, which agrees priorities for each strand of work. ‘see me’ was approached to be one of the key partners in developing the partnership, so that the work of GASP could link effectively with the national campaign.
The challenge
The main challenge was engaging such a wide variety of partners to commit to tackling stigma. This was achieved through spending time engaging partners to gain their commitment to tackling stigma and discrimination.
Resources
GASP is based on the principle of active partnership, where each partner makes a contribution, in terms of actual resources or in-kind contributions, such as staff time or accommodation. NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde provided the core budget, with significant contributions from all of the major partners.
‘see me’ had a particular role in helping with the design of marketing materials, such as the production of the GASP brochure, to promote the work of the partnership.
What we did
GASP has delivered an ambitious programme over the last 3-4 years, including:
- The development of a mental health curriculum pack for secondary schools, providing 4 lessons for each year group (S1-S6) within the personal and social education programme, which has been rolled out to all schools within Glasgow city and gained interest nationally. The pack is available on the see me website (link to pack).
- The development of an anti-stigma workplace training pack and training partnership involving PMA, SAMH and GAMH, with its delivery to over 1000 key front line workers from housing, benefits, money advice, employment providers and British Telecom.
- ‘Mosaics’, a community led research and intervention programme, which aims to tackle stigma and discrimination within BME communities in Glasgow through community conversation discussion groups, a storytelling project and work with faith leaders.
- The development of anti-stigma training for practitioners and the production of an anti-stigma DVD for future practitioners
- The development of a training resource for university staff
- Peer-led research, education and drama workshops with to tackle stigma and discrimination within the later life population
- Community led research with the LGBT population in Glasgow
All of the programmes are being carefully evaluated through a monitoring and evaluation framework, which has been developed by the partnership and supported through the funding of assistant psychology posts by the partnership.
What we learned
The key learning has been about the importance of working in partnership to deliver a wide-ranging programme with real results. The concept of active partnership, drawing on the expertise and resources of all partners has been crucial to the success of the partnership. In addition, the partnership had a commitment to develop research based programmes undertaking robust stigma impact evaluations that have resulted high quality peer-revised publications and reports, which have influenced policy in this area.
‘see me’ is owned and run by an alliance of five mental health organisations: Highland Users Group; National Schizophrenia Fellowship Scotland; Penumbra; Royal College of Psychiatrists Scottish Division; and Scottish Association for Mental Health. ‘see me’ is fully funded by the Scottish Government.
Published by ‘see me’
1/3 Great Michael House
14 Links Place
Edinburgh
EH6 4EZ
www.seemescotland.org