At the end of 1997 Mind in Manchester Ltd. secured a three year funding grant from the National Lottery Charities Board and the Mind To Mind Project began in January 1998. At that time Mind in Manchester offered a variety of services including a Helpline, an Information Service and a counselling service.

One of the aims of the project was to develop it as independent from Mind in Manchester, user led and managed by those people directly involved in the project.

The grant application described the project as; "A project about empowering people with mental health problems. The focus will be on people with severe mental health problems. Support would be provided to develop a new service that takes referrals from people who want to share their experiences of mental health problems with other people with similar experiences". People were supported to volunteer for existing Mind services including the Helpline, a pilot Advocacy Service and the Information Service.

The support took the form of individually tailored "on the job" training, internal training courses, external training courses and informal individual and group supervision.

The project enabled Mind in Manchester to recruit almost forty volunteers and run two basic Mental Health Awareness courses. The emphasis of the project at this stage of its development was to have people who had experience of mental health difficulties working side by side with people who did not have this experience. This allowed both groups of people to learn from each other.

This year was a year of great change for Mind in Manchester. The Mindline pilot scheme ran from August 1998 until March 1999. This project attempted to combine the Information Service and Helpline so as to provide information and emotional support five days a week. Mind also ran an Advocacy Development Project and a Mental Health IT Project which both finished early in 1999. The Mental Health IT Project was an innovative project that enabled mental health service users to develop IT skills in a safe supportive environment. Participants of the Mind To Mind Project were involved in all of the above projects.

A project advisory group was formed by the volunteers to advise on the development of the project. This was supported by the paid workers and feedback was passed on to the Executive Committee.

At the start of 1999 the Executive Committee made the decision to reduce the number of services that it was offering. The impact of this was that the number of volunteering opportunities for Mind To Mind participants was greatly reduced. Also at this time the decision was taken to change the emphasis of the Mind To Mind Project so as to allow the participants on the project more intensive one to one support.

A number of the project participants formed a support group that met externally from Mind in Manchester. This allowed them to support each other mutually through what was a difficult time for both Mind To Mind participants and Mind in Manchester.

The project was re-launched in June 1999 with eight participants, including previous Mind To Mind participants. There were two main themes, part of the project was the development of a regular group meeting called the Mind To Mind space. The Mind To Mind space was a venue where people on the project could meet and get involved in a variety of group activities of their choice.

The activities included drama work, creative drawing, making a mosaic and short walks around the Manchester area. The drama work enabled participants to develop enough self confidence to ask their psychiatrist to reduce the amount of medication that they were taking. All of the activities allowed people from the project to meet other people in a similar situation, share experiences and learn from each other. The Mind To Mind space was also used as a venue where the participants could get involved in the decisions that affected the project.

This replaced the Project Advisory Group and allowed all participants to have a say on how the project developed.

The other aspect of the project was to enable people with mental health difficulties to provide and receive support from each other. This was achieved by creating and maintaining a framework within which people could benefit from mutual support.

Four people on the project took part in intensive training which enabled them to feel confident enough to take the lead role in mutual support. Once the training was completed, people were linked to provide mutual support. One pair initially got involved in social activities, these included visiting the cinema, cafes and going for short walks. As the confidence of the person primarily receiving support grew he then felt able to go on a computer course.

Another person was supported to work on the Information service by answering telephone calls and responding to information requests either by letter, fax or telephone.

As all the participants of the project had in some way suffered from severe and enduring mental health difficulties there was a continual process of checking what sort of support they required from Mind in Manchester. It was decided that group supervision facilitated by an external supervisor for those participants taking a lead role in the mutual support would be beneficial. This was an opportunity for participants to offer each other support. In addition, all participants of the project would receive regular one to one support from the Project Development Worker.

Two participants who received the training to enable them to take the lead role in mutual support did not feel able to offer this support after the training had finished due to personal reasons. The project was later able to provide support to one of these people in the third year by offering assistance to go shopping.

A personal training allowance was made available to all participants of the project. The money was available for courses, classes, workshops etc. so as to allow people to develop personally on subjects of their choice. A small number of the participants made use of this allowance by going on various courses. At the end of 1999 the Executive Committee decided to change the emphasis of the project so that it no longer had a group aspect to it. This allowed the resources to be focused completely on individual participants.

It became clear at this stage that those existing participants did not have the resources to develop the project independently from Mind in Manchester. This aim was dropped from the project and the decision was taken not to seek further funding for the project.

During the previous year the group meetings had been successful at establishing a safe space were people felt able to talk with each other and share their experiences. A number of the participants on the project felt that they wanted to continue meeting as a group. Mind in Manchester initially supported these meetings but gradually withdrew support. This allowed the participants to become completely autonomous from Mind in Manchester and they met regularly for a coffee or a drink in Manchester.

The publicity for the project was changed, including the web site so that it was targeted at people who specifically wanted to get involved in some sort of activity but did not feel able to do this without support. The project tried to target people who had fallen through the net that other support services provided. This involved some outreach work by trying to make face to face contact with potential participants and referrers.

At first recruitment was slow, but as the year progressed and the project built up a good reputation with referrers, there was a steady stream of people joining the project.

Participants were also helped to deal with particular issues in their life such as dealing with a solicitor or help with getting out of the house to do some shopping.

Within the Mind office participants were supported to learn various IT skills, to learn telephone skills, to develop research and administration skills, to publish their written work on the Mind in Manchester web site and in Survivors United Network Newsletter. A high quality 3-fold publicity leaflet was produced for the Information Service.

Each participant was with the Mind To Mind Project for between six and eighteen months. After they left the project they moved on to other activities. These included joining a young men's group, becoming a member of Mind in Manchester's Executive Committee and returning to Mind in Manchester to work for therapeutic earnings. Two participants have applied for the Mind Millennium Awards. Many of the participants carried on to do further courses without support from Mind in Manchester, including a Diploma in Counselling.

As the project approached the end of the third year no new participants were recruited. Those existing participants were supported to move on when the project ended.