Embodying policy-making in mental health: the implementation of Partners in Recovery

ABSTRACT

This paper starts from the premise that embodied knowledge is critical to understanding health policy implementation. We explore this notion through a qualitative investigation of the way that knowledge has functioned in the implementation of an Australian mental health policy, Partners in Recovery (PIR). Analysis uses the theoretical lens of interpretive policy analysis and the ‘embodied, inscribed, enacted’ knowledge schema developed by Freeman and Sturdy [(2014a). Introduction: Knowledge in policy – embodied, inscribed, enacted. In R. Freeman & S. Sturdy (Eds.), Knowledge in policy: Embodied, inscribed, enacted (pp. 1–19). Bristol: Policy Press]. Our analysis reveals a policy problem centred around difficulties of coordination where the inscribed solution lies in individuals who must implement the PIR program in local areas. Our interviews with PIR consortium members and stakeholders show that this implementation happens through the enactment of embodied knowledge. However this implementation is not straightforward and we point to difficulties arising from the centrality of embodied processes in implementation, related to the localisation of systems knowledge in individuals and structural devaluation of certain types of knowledge over others.

KEYWORDS:

• Mental health
• embodied knowledge
• health services
• health policy
• Australia
• interpretive policy analysis

Acknowledgements

We acknowledge the assistance of Ivy Yen who worked as a research assistant on this project and collected the interview data used in this paper. The authors declare that that they do not have financial interest or envisage any benefit arising from the direct applications of this research. The funding bodies have not seen or approved this research and place no limitations on its publication.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Jennifer Smith-Merry http://orcid.org/0000-0002-6705-2652

James Gillespie http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0355-4178

Notes

1 We acknowledge the contested nature of terminology around individuals who experience mental ill-health and the inability for one term to capture every individual’s experience of ill-health and their interactions with the health care system. Here we use the terms consumer and client interchangeably. Consumer is the term most used by peak consumer-led bodies in Australia (e.g. by the National Mental Health Consumer and Carer Forum) and client is used in the PIR program guidelines.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by funding from New Horizons and Wentwest for whom we are evaluating Partners in Recovery.