As we approached our tenth anniversary at The Life Rooms, we reflected on how we can continue to support people in the best way and make sure our service is fit for the future.
The Life Rooms began as a recovery college, helping Mersey Care service users as they moved on from clinical mental health teams. We supported people to build confidence in managing their recovery and wellbeing and helped connect them with useful support in the community.
As The Life Rooms is part of Mersey Care, our support should sit alongside the care provided by clinical mental health teams. To help refocus what we offer for clinical mental health teams, we’re making some changes to parts of our service so we can offer more joined-up support for their service users. The Life Rooms can help by offering structured support to build confidence, skills and knowledge.
What’s changing
- We’ll be working more closely with Mersey Care clinical mental health teams, so more of their service users can access The Life Rooms.
- Our Pathways Advice and Learning services will focus on your goals, with personalised plans to help you work towards what matters most to you. You can read about how your journey through The Life Rooms might look here.
- These services will be available for a set amount of time, based on your needs, to help you build confidence in managing your health and wellbeing independently. You can find out more about time frames here.
- We are introducing a new eligibility criteria, which you can read here.
- Our café, library and computer areas will be available for set amounts of time, so we can make access as fair as possible for everyone. You can read more about that here.
- From 1 September, our Southport site will be open for appointments, sessions and computer use only.
What hasn’t changed?
- The Life Rooms remains free to access, and still offers support with social needs, wellbeing, learning, employment, digital skills and community connections.
- Reasonable adjustments will continue to be available to our service users.
- Self-referrals are still possible, subject to eligibility and availability.
- We are not closing our buildings.
As we start to put these changes in place, we want to reassure everyone that we are here to listen, understand their needs and provide support.
We will continue to play an important role in supporting people’s mental health and wellbeing, with an even stronger focus on recovery, prevention and whole-person care.
Our structured and personalised support will help people build the confidence, knowledge and skills to manage their health and wellbeing independently and improve access for those using clinical mental health services.