The Recovering Citizenship Learning Collaborative: a system-wide intervention to increase citizenship practices and outcomes

This paper aims to describe the Recovering Citizenship Learning Collaborative (RCLC), a training, consultation and implementation effort for 13 local mental health authorities and two state hospitals.

The learning collaborative used a Recovering Citizenship approach, which holds that recovery occurs in the context of people’s lives in their communities and society, that is, their citizenship. The RCLC was implemented by the Connecticut Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services (DMHAS) in the USA and the Yale Program for Recovery and Community Health along with lived experience leaders. The RCLC supported system change through training DMHAS staff on concepts of recovery and citizenship and developing agency action plans, with the long-term goal of improving citizenship-oriented care at the agency-level and recovery and citizenship-related outcomes for people receiving services.

Lessons learned include the importance of assessing organizational readiness for change, addressing leadership investment and attention to systemic barrier, and offering tools to promote structure and accountability. Next steps are supporting agency action plans through technical assistance, state-wide educational offerings and a resource library.

Systemic barriers are considerable and must be addressed before system transformation is possible.

The authors are hopeful that the RCLC has been part of overcoming those challenges and can be a tool for building foundations for improving citizen practices and people’s citizenship-related outcomes.

Next steps are sustaining agency action plans, ongoing agency-specific technical assistance, ongoing state-wide educational offerings and a resource library.

The RCLC has provided tools and supports to build the foundation for improved citizenship practices and client outcomes at the multiagency system level.