Kent and Medway NHS and Social Care Partnership Trust provides mental health and social care services in the UK for the areas of Kent and Medway. As one of the larger mental health trusts in the country, we cover an area of 1,450 sq miles and serve 1.7 million people across Kent and Medway. The Trust’s income is £173m with 3,260 staff providing a range of mental health and other specialist services from around 50 sites. Our services are predominantly provided around key urban centres including Maidstone, Medway and Canterbury, but we provide a range of services in community locations, reflecting the urban and rural mix of the area. The Trust has also introduced telemedicine to enhance accessibility.

We have 39 in-patient wards consisting of Older Adults, Forensic services, Adult acute services, Learning disabilities and Rehabilitation. We also have a large number of community mental health teams who support service users in their own homes. We also have 6 crisis teams which provide immediate multi-disciplinary, community based treatment 24 hours a day, seven days a week for individuals with acute, severe mental health problems as an alternative to hospital admission. Last year we cared for nearly 50,000 people, involving more than half a million contacts.

Our services offer a mix of skills that our service users engage in and say are helpful. These include visual art, horticulture and Occupational Therapy to name a few. More and more studies are showing that using the arts can help build and protect wellbeing and speed up recovery from long tern mental health needs. One reason for this is because activities such as art and music can help us develop coping strategies and self-care skills. For instance, taking part in creative activity, can relax and calm not only people in distress but on a longer term outlook can prevent future distress. In relation to this project we have a variety of professionals who work within the arts and a high number of professionals who would like to put arts into their work with service users, and currently lack the necessary understanding and training to do so.

The Trust is the lead partner of the TABLO project.

Partner Website: www.kmpt.nhs.uk

“Autism Baia Mare” Association is a private NGO founded by highly motivated parents in 2008.

Our vision : A tolerant and responsible society that integrates children with developmental disorders.

Our mission: Improving living conditions and social adaptability of children with developmental disorders in order to improve the quality of life of these children and their families.

Our objectives are:

• Creating an optimum environment for recovery, education and social integration of children with developmental disorders;
• Providing assistance, rehabilitation and care for the children attending Autism Association Baia Mare;
• Changing social attitudes towards children with developmental;
• Providing training and support for the child's family;
• Informing and making the community about developmental disorders;
• Developing strategies for achieving self-financing on medium and long term.

A multidisciplinary team consisting of psychologists, movement therapist, speech therapist, art and music therapist, parents’ adviser is working for the benefit of the children and their families. Recovering children with ASD (autism spectrum disorders ) and other developmental disorders requires a continuously stimulating and motivating program for the child to enable him/her to achieve his/her full potential.

Partner Website: www.autismbaiamare.ro

Centre for Psychiatry and Disabilities, Regional municipality of Bornholm, Denmark

Centre for Psychiatry and Disabilities is a municipal organization responsible for providing support for citizens with psychiatric and/or physical impairment. Centre for Psychiatry and Disabilities performs its duties under the Danish social regulation, with the authority to decide the support needed for the citizens. 

The support is provided by other public bodies, private companies and the centre itself.  The support we provide for people with mental illness is defined as psychosocial rehabilitation, and can be provided in three different ways:

1. Individual pedagogical support in the citizen's home or surroundings.
2. Group organized pedagogical support in our activity centres 
3. Temporary residential accommodation 

All types of support are provided in collaboration with other areas of relevance for the citizen, e.g.: employment, health and education. 

Partner Website: www.brk.dk

CARDET is one of the leading research and development centers in the eastern Mediterranean region with expertise in project design and implementation, capacity building, and e-learning. CARDET has completed numerous projects relating to the development of innovation, entrepreneurship and access to the labor market. CARDET leads a country-wide initiative to examine best practices in the ways academia and industry collaborate to support entrepreneurship and promote employability in the local community and the market. CARDET brings together an international team of experts with decades of global expertise in research, evaluation, entrepreneurship, employability development, professional capacity building, youth empowerment, design thinking, innovation, education and human resource development. Members of the CARDET team have successfully participated in more than 150 projects in more than 30 countries, several of which were supported by the European Commission, the United Nations Development Program, Microsoft, The Commonwealth of Learning, international agencies and governments from around the world. 

Partner Website: www.cardet.org 

Association Sementera ONLUS is a non-profit organization founded in 1995 that offers programs of rehabilitation and social inclusion through innovative nonverbal approaches to people with mental suffering. 

The Association is constituted by volunteers and professionals in the mental health field, clients and family members. 

A core interest is the research for sensory integration techniques to stimulate verbal communication, which is disturbed or absent in psychotic and autistic clients. Different sensorial channels - sight, hearing, touch – are involved in an integrated way. 

Sementera collaborates locally with mental health services and health centers and is linked to several international networks. Research projects with many italian and international universities are in progress. 

Sementera also takes the challenge of the "digital revolution" to ensure that the new multimedia and technological devices are not instruments of isolation but can be tools for self-expression and deep relationship. An interactive software system was also developed (Painteraction System).

Amniotic therapy was developed since the 90s. It is an innovative group experience that takes place in water at 34.5 ° C. Painteraction System and Amniotic therapy can enrich the sense of personal identity by improving the quality of personal relationships and by also influencing relationships outside the setting.