Recovery-oriented mental health service programs are often rather based on ideological or political considerations than on empirical evidence.

At Klinikum Bremerhaven Reinkenheide, we have included peer support workers in our teams in order to improve the quality of our treatment program and the recovery attitudes of the staff members.

To control and evaluate this process an independent investigator conducted 13 (T1: February 2012), respectively 15 (T2: September 2013) interviews with different stakeholders of the change process. The interviews were transcribed and analysed for the categories level of information, confidence, participation and profession/working conditions/team structure.

The main result of T1 was that nursing staff fostered the projected transformation while physicians and psychologists focused on risk management and worried about losing their role. As implication of the T1 results, we offer a continuous in-house-training to improve interprofessional teamwork and social psychiatric expertise. At T2 all interviewed participants judged the involvement of the peer support workers positively. Many oft the interviewees expressed though that from their point of view their participation had decreased and/or, the reorganisation was already terminated. As implication of T2, we now try to improve our internal communication and cooperation and strengthen the involvement of all stakeholder groups.

Besides the employment of peer support workers, it is essential in a recovery-oriented transformation of mental health services:

– to train staff members continuously and;

– to involve all stakeholder groups continuously in the change management.

A third survey is projected for 2017 to implement further requirements for a successful change process.