Rachel's blog

Formerly Director of Quality Assurance and User Experience at South West London and St. George’s Mental Health NHS Trust, Rachel Perkins is now a freelance consultant and a member of the ‘Implementing Recovery – Organisational Change’ project team (a programme to help organizations to develop recovery-focused practice commissioned by the Department of Health and delivered by a partnership between the NHS Confederation and Centre for Mental Health).

Her background is in clinical psychology and she is also a long term user of mental health services, a member of the cross government Equality 2025 disability advisory committee and Mind’s Commission of Enquiry into Acute and Crisis Care.

In 2009 she was commissioned by the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions to lead an independent review into how Government might better support people with mental health problems to gain work and prosper in employment. (Realising ambitions: Better employment support for people with a mental health condition, DWP, December 2009).

She has written and spoken widely about recovery and social inclusion for people with mental health conditions and has pioneered the UK development of programmes to help people with mental health difficulties to access employment and education based on the ‘Individual Placement with Support’ approach, including one designed increase employment opportunities within mental health services for people who have themselves experienced mental health problems.

In 2010 she was awarded an OBE for services to mental health and voted Mind Champion of the Year. Her latest book, written with Julie Repper, is Social Inclusion and Recovery: A Model for Mental Health Practice (2003, Balliere Tindall).