Yesterday’s COCAPP meeting in Cardiff was both productive and fun. It was lovely to welcome those members of the London contingent able to make the trip, and I extend my apologies (again, and for the last time!) to those I conspired to keep waiting in a darkened corridor before turning up with a room key.
COCAPP is an exciting research project to be involved in, and pretty soon it will have its own blog. I’ll then add links from here for those who are interested. Briefly summarised, this is an England and Wales cross-national investigation into mental health care planning and coordination, and into the relationships between these processes and recovery and personalisation. It’s funded by the NIHR Health Services and Delivery Research Programme, and has lots of distinct elements: about which more will follow, I guess, once the dedicated project blog is up. For now, here’s a photo of yesterday’s assembled COCAPPers (where from left to right there’s Aled, Jitka, Alan (COCAPP’s chief investigator), Sally, me and Michael. We very much missed Alison and Jennifer and their wise contributions, and when we’re all in one place I imagine we’ll take another, and more complete, photo.
Yesterday evening was the traditional social involving food and drink with fellow members of Mental Health Nurse Academics UK, ahead of today’s meeting proper. As Cardiff hosted we got to select the venues, and I hope everyone who was able to make it enjoyed the selection of fine ales and wines, and indeed the general ambience, at The Rummer Tavern. Likewise the food at The Mango House.
MHNAUK’s first meeting of 2013 was a good ‘un. Jen French talked about mental health strategy in Wales, and Ian Hulatt updated us on the Willis Commission. Eschewing the usual format of host universities presenting their research and teaching activities in the morning, Michael Coffey (in the photo above, and MHNAUK chair) and Joy Duxbury (newly elected vice chair) invited reflections and discussion on the aims and purpose of the group, and on the character of research in mental health nursing and what can be done to nurture it. There was some lively discussion in the two groups (facilitated by Linda Cooper and Len Bowers respectively) which convened to talk to these areas. It occurred to me unhelpfully after the event that we might have taken a MHNAUK photo, including the 35 or so members participating today: not least as MHNAUK, like COCAPP, is collectively thinking of increasing its presence via a blog.
Work aside, running has taken a big back seat this week, what with one thing and another. Must get out soon!
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