The Day to Day Living in the Community Program: Mental Health

This report provides a detailed analysis of the Day to Day Living (D2DL) program in Australia, a government initiative aimed at improving the lives of individuals with persistent and severe mental illness. The program, with an investment of $45.5 million over five years, focuses on providing structured community support and rehabilitation activities. The report explores the program's aims, which include supporting individuals experiencing social isolation, increasing their participation in recreational and social activities, and enhancing their quality of life. It outlines the various programs offered, such as Drop-In activities and Medium Level Support, detailing the different activities and support services provided. The report further identifies key stakeholders, including national-level organizations and the government, and discusses the techniques used by the D2DL program, such as appropriate organization selection, resource accessibility, and linkages to public mental health services. Finally, it examines the results of the program, highlighting the support provided to individuals experiencing social isolation, increased participation ability, enhanced independence, and improved community participation. The report references several studies to support its findings.

Running Head: THE DAY TO DAY LIVING IN THE COMMUNITY
The Day to Day Living in the Community
Student’s Name
Institution

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Explain about the specific program related to mental health illness
The government of Australia committed $45.5 million in five years aiming at improving the
quality lives for individuals living with persistent and severe mental illness through establishing
the D2DL program. In the beginning, D2DL was founded and set up for the 15,000 “places”
accessible to consumers countrywide for the aim of gaining structured community support, or for
the participation in the daily programs as rehabilitation activities. D2DL had a design that could
avail an additional "places," 7,000, for individuals experiencing major mental illness giving way
for the reception of structured support or participation in the day programs.
Once the program kicked in, one of its impacts was felt in small organizations in that the
organizations’ resource base expanded with the number of sites visited, thereby, contributing to
significant changes in these small organizations. This expansion of network paved the way for
providers to access more consumers to provide support consumers with a range of vocational,
recreational and social activities in the communities. Additionally, the D2DL group focus had a
developed wide range of structured activities that were well supported by consumers. The
consumer active sought in identifying weekly scheduled activities allowed rebuilding of
confidence as well as trying the new social setting approach. External stakeholders, service
providers, and consumers supported the D2DL program (Murphy, Peters, Wilkes, & Jackson,
2017).
What is there aim
The aims of the D2DL are pointing at enhancing support available to individuals who
experience. This brought the D2DL aims to be considered at two levels: the organizational or the
system level and the service delivery or the client level to (Parker, et al., 2017):

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 Support the severe and persistent mentally ill people who are exposed to social isolation.
 Increase the ability of mental ill people to participate in the recreational, social and
educational activities.
 Increase the support of the community in participating through assisting participants in
the program to develop skills.
 Assist people with mental illness in improving the quality of life making them live
successfully with an optimal independent level in the community.
What are their programs
1. Drop In activities
Some activities are being taken in the Drop In D2DL program activity. These include (Bril-
Barniv, Moran, Naaman, Roe, & Karnieli-Miller, 2017);
 Support and discussion groups.
 Outings and social events such as walks, barbeques as well as Christmas celebrations.
 Liason with the service provider in promoting referral and links pathways (Bhullar,
Rickwood, Carter, & Haridas, 2017).
2. Medium Level Support activity
In MLS, there is a range of activities in motion. MLS D2DL program includes the following
actions:
 Structured support in developing support and social networks in the mentally affected
communities.
 Linking to a limited provision of vocational support and training.
 Linking to support services that include income and housing support.

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Their group members
There are various members of the D2DL program. Some of the members include (Awram,
Hancock, & Honey, 2017):
 National level organizations such as PHaMS
 The government that founded the program.
 Discretionary funders.
Techniques that they used
1. The selected organization appropriateness.
In the D2DL program, the selection part for the involved organizations required identification of
geographical sites by consulting the government, discussion with the different stakeholders to
ensure that the criteria in selecting participatory organizations were appropriate that rapidly
increase their program’s funding (Honey, Nugent, Hancock, & Scanlan, 2017).
2. The programs required resource accessibility
In all the site visits to the D2DL program, the program could be implemented through the
ensured availability of funds anytime the services were needed. Consistently, the program
provided time as well as resources for participating organizations thus providing a refined
preparation and planning for the implementation of the program. Therefore, the D2DL would
use assessment tools other than arranged premises for the delivery of services.
3. Existing relationship between other initiatives and the D2DL

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The D2DL used some programs that allowed relation at the national level and in individual
jurisdiction relating to the D2DL that targets the needs of persistent and severe mental illness in
people. National level involved the PHaMS that aims individual rather than the group.
4. The linkage to the public mental health services
D2DL has had a diverse and developing mental health service in that there is a link with acute,
public and community psychological services as the sources for the referral to produce a clear
pathway from mentally ill to recovery.
5. Discretionary Funding
D2DL has a provision of 25% funding support that is discretionary as an identified innovation
within the program that has received universal support. As the program keeps on maturing it
appears that the D2DL operations have become skilled in using discretionary funds in active
response to the clientele needs.
Results of it
1. Support to individuals experiencing social isolation
Over the duration of visitation, D2DL provided impetus to getting outdoors, chances to try
approaches in dealing with isolation and provision of opportunity. In case an individual was
missing visitation, they were called to check on their progress. Also, the visitations developed
informal social networking (Blomqvist, Sandgren, Carlsson, & Jormfeldt, 2018).
2. Increased participation ability

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The D2DL program has numerous ways individuals could participate in experiencing and
pursuing opportunities that may never have been available. Individuals could join through MLS
or DI activities, discretionary funding and the structured programs, provided a safe environment
and operation in groups.
3. Independence and improved quality lives
There is an enhanced improvement of life qualities through site visitations and consultations. The
many improvements include having a reason to get out of the bed, support to participate in
activities and providing a social setting that mental illness would not be an attention focus and
many more.
4. Increasing community participation
The D2DL has created a re-established social and practical set of skills that engage the
community in structured group activities with the mentally ill, establishing links as well as
networks with various consumers and the community organizations and establishing context
such as selling goods that broaden the community involvement.

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References
Awram, R., Hancock, N., & Honey, A. (2017). Balancing mothering and mental health recovery:
the voices of mothers living with mental illness. Advances in Mental Health, 147-160.
Bhullar, N., Rickwood, D., Carter, T., & Haridas, S. (2017). Taking care of teenagers, taking
care of me: Profiling parental caregiving burden and activity restriction in a sample of
Australian parents. International journal of mental health nursing, 593-601.
Blomqvist, M., Sandgren, A., Carlsson, I. M., & Jormfeldt, H. (2018). Enabling healthy living:
Experiences of people with severe mental illness in psychiatric outpatient services.
International journal of mental health nursing, 236-246.
Bril-Barniv, S., Moran, G. S., Naaman, A., Roe, D., & Karnieli-Miller, O. (2017). A qualitative
study examining experiences and dilemmas in concealment and disclosure of people
living with serious mental illness. Qualitative health research,, 573-583.
Honey, A., Nugent, A., Hancock, N., & Scanlan, J. (2017). “It's hard work, believe me!”: Active
efforts to optimise housing by people who live with mental illness and access housing
assistance. Australian Journal of Social Issues, 347-366.
Murphy, G., Peters, K., Wilkes, L., & Jackson, D. (2017). Adult children of parents with mental
illness: navigating stigma. Child & Family Social Work, 330-338.
Parker, S., Dark, F., Newman, E., Korman, N., Rasmussen, Z., & Meurk, C. (2017). Reality of
working in a community‐based, recovery‐oriented mental health rehabilitation unit: A
pragmatic grounded theory analysis. International journal of mental health nursing, 355-
365.

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Whitehead, L., Jacob, E., Towell, A., Abu‐qamar, M. E., & Cole‐Heath, A. (2018). The role of
the family in supporting the self‐management of chronic conditions: A qualitative
systematic review. Journal of clinical nursing, 22-30.