Walk the Talk Toolkit:A Knowledge Translation Tool to Implement Mental Health Recovery into Services

Background: The prevailing way of implementing new interventions is for organisations to be told what needs to be implemented and how to do it. Our research project employed an alternative approach which built capacity in community-based organisations and shifted power. At the centre of the novel way of doing research is an implementation team made-up of service users, family members, knowledge users, service providers and managers. Implementation Teams followed a facilitated planning process and received coaching in order to implement a recovery-oriented intervention of their choice.  



Methods: This implementation strategy of having Implementation Teams was tested in 7 organisations providing housing and mental health services across Canada. In all 55 implementation team members (12 managers, 19 service providers, 16 service users, 3 family members and 5 knowledge users) participated in eight 60-90 minute qualitative group interviews. Questions were open-ended and focused on the experience of participating on an implementation team. A thematic approach was used for analysis.



Findings: All seven organisations implemented one recovery-oriented intervention. Implementation team members, none of whom were previously trained in implementation science, learned how to apply implementation science frameworks and tools to their planning process. They reflected on how the process stood in contrast to usual approaches to research that they were accustomed to. For instance, rather than go fast, they could take time, rather than falling flat, they could follow through, and rather than top-down, it was bottom-up.



Conclusion: As a result of this innovative research a bilingual online toolkit -Walk the talk/De la parole a l'action was launched in February 2022. This toolkit builds capacity in implementing mental health recovery in non-academic settings. It offers organizations a concrete way to implement best practices into their services.This contributes to the social inclusion of people with mental health challenges.