HEART--the Hounslow Early Active Recovery Team: implementing an inclusive strength-based model of care for people...

In recent years in the UK, the National Health Service has made policy commitments to delivering mental health services based on recovery principles. In general though, the UK mental health service providers are in the early stages of implementing recovery principles and approaches in front-line services. This paper describes the work of the Hounslow Early Active Recovery Team (HEART), which has made substantial progress in placing recovery principles and approaches at the heart of the work of an early intervention for psychosis team working in an ethnically diverse area of West London. As evidence of the success of the HEART, in its first year and half, the team has achieved high levels of customer satisfaction with its work and a recent audit has revealed that 57% of respondents were in employment or education contrasting with the extremely high unemployment rates reported in several UK studies of people with serious mental health problems.