Tendering For Care

A health summit took place in London which saw mental health charities and social inclusion experts encourage healthcare chiefs to utilise local services better by embracing 'time banking'.

'Time banking' is the name given to the practice where people are encouraged to pledge time to volunteer for a variety of initiatives, schemes and communities.These volunteers can provide a lifeline within all aspects of healthcare, but there is a particular market for the mental health sector.Dr Edgar Cahn, the inventor of time banking and founder of Time Banks USA, told the summit: "Mental Health professionals must learn to say 'I need what you can do as badly as you need what I can do' otherwise programmes will continue to fail if they cannot enlist service users as co-producers of the outcome."Executive director of Time Banks UK, Martin Simon, added: "Mental health professionals need to seek out such opportunities for their service users and value contributions from a wider range of local people rather than treat people as passive consumers of services."