About Lanarkshire Links

We are a membership organisation formed in September 2002 with over 400 mental health service user and carer members.

Management Committee

The management committee consists of 14 service users and carers along with representatives from NHS Lanarkshire, North and South Lanarkshire Council Social Work Departments and a member of staff from Alzheimer Scotland Action on Dementia.

Supporting Involvement

The purpose of Lanarkshire Links is to support mental health service users and carers to be involved in the process of planning services. This will include ensuring that they are informed about existing services and current examples of good practice, that the process of involvement is inclusive and not detrimental to peoples’ health and welfare and that we can truly influence the services available in Lanarkshire.

Guidelines

Mental health service users and carers, working together have already produced guidelines for involvement which have been adopted by most of the planning groups (although they are still not always adhered to!).Lanarkshire Links will monitor these and take action to ensure they are working.

Alternatives to 'Formal' Involvement

We will also continue to pursue other ways of ensuring that the views of service users and carers are taken into account when services are planned. Not everyone, in fact probably the majority of mental health service users will choose not to become involved in the formal process despite the work we have been able to do to build peoples confidence and make the process more user friendly.

Therefore we continue to have small focus groups, 1 to 1 interviews either face to face or over the phone, questionnaires and attendance at our members meetings allows you to mix with liked minded people and gain support form your peers.

Local Representation

Lanarkshire Links will work with the partner agencies to develop local mental health issues groups in each area of Lanarkshire. These local groups will inform the development of local services.

These issues groups now exist in East Kilbride, Hamilton, Clydesdale and Rutherglen/Cambuslang in the South and Wishaw, Motherwell/Bellshill, Airdrie/Coatbridge, Shotts and Cumbernauld in the North. We also support a Joint Issues group that has representation from each of the local groups and looks at common issues across Lanarkshire.