Rethink Politics - background
Rethink Politics was a three year project funded by the Electoral Commission aimed at raising awareness, creating understanding and encouraging participation in politics by people who are affected by mental illness.
Phase one researched what the programme needed to achieve and phase two which ran throughout 2008 and 2009 saw over 300 service-users, carers, staff and volunteers undertake a Rethink Politics training programme to become ‘Rethink Politics Champions’.
The aims of these training programmes were:
- To increase participants' awareness of how local, national and EU democracy is organised and how decisions that affect them are made.
- To identify barriers people with mental illness face in participating in the democratic process.
Participants learned how they could become more involved in the democratic process and how they can share these ideas to encourage people in their community to become more politically aware and use their vote.
With phase three, we launched a voter registration campaign whereby ‘Rethink Politics Champions’ were encouraging others affected by mental health issues to register and have a political ‘voice’. We are aimed to get an extra 5,000 people affected by mental illness onto the Electoral Register by the end of 2009.
The Research team are evaluated this project and we launched the results at an event in Parliament on 2nd December 2009.
You can read the report here:
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