RJA

 Mental health and housing : joined up thinking for 21st Century  community mental health ....   
“ Robin Johnson has become the David Attenborough of supported housing in mental health. You can almost imagine him in a crumpled suit, hunkered down in the garden of some small run-down former vicarage , and positively brimming with hushed enthusiasm for the discovery of yet another example of a creative community of souls, deep in the urban jungle somewhere....”


“ Robin is the Wainwright of the inner city; he went were no-one had gone  before, and showed us things we had never thought to see before.
More recent involvements

Whilst on secondment to NSIP, RJA’s Robin Johnson was one of the technical advisers to the Dept Health and the Social Exclusion Task Force in the development of National Indicator 149 ( on mental health and settled accommodation) for the Public Service Agreement on Socially Excluded Adults, PSA 16. His article on local priority areas for action appears in the RJA publications section.  

Robin has since worked with the Dept of Health on identifying the evidence base for the impact of housing interventions on individual and community mental health. (See Publications and Thinkpieces) He worked with GOEM on identifying local examples of effective inclusion practice for the GOEM “Inclusion Awards”.  He was then one of the principal authors for the joint CLG/NMHDU good practice guidance on meeting the psychological and emotional needs of homeless people.

Imagery
 Top: The Gestalt psychologists used images such as this, of a two faces becoming a vase, to reveal the operation of the mind in actively constructing the meaning of what we think we simply “see”; and to demonstrate how oddly difficult it may be to hold in mind two apparently incompatible images. We now find that many have a similar difficulty in seeing the links between mental health, housing, and community.......
Bottom right: The Arkwright Building at Nottingham Trent. It is believed that DH Lawrence, a student here, must have used the basement  toilets.

 

Robin Johnson, founding partner and R&D lead for RJA, has now been invited to become joint editor (with Lynn Vickery), of  “Housing Care and Support” - the principal quarterly journal in this field in the UK. Formerly published by Pier, the journal is now part of the international (but still  Yorkshire-based) Emerald publishing group.

 

Robin’s aim will be to assist in developing the journal, from its original focus primarily on supported accommodation, to encompass the wider role of housing as the pivot of community care, and the basic ground for public health and community well-being.

 

If there is ever to be such a thing as a “Big Society”, it will be grounded in where we live; and the role of social housing, in particular, in the creation of “a still Bigger Society” is one we will actively explore here.