Psychosocial Rehabilitation/Réadaptation Psychosociale (PSR/RPS) Canada is an association of individuals and organizations committed to the provision and growth of psychosocial rehabilitation services to support the recovery of persons with serious mental health issues. The Association promotes psychosocial rehabilitation principles and the growth of psychosocial rehabilitation practices in Canada.

Organization website: www.psrrpscanada.ca

Project

Endeavour is collaborating with PSR to develop an implementation plan for the association's communications strategy to improve communications with PSR Canada members.

Team

Matt Fullbrook Advisor	Jared Simon Engagement Manager	Andrew Forde Consultant	Nawaz Lakhani Consultant	Frank Zhang Consultant

We have just completed our first month on the PSR project. The team is comprised of three very dedicated and committed consultants, Frank Zhang, Nawaz Lakhani and Andrew Forde. Our team is being advised by Matt Fullbrook.

We are just getting underway on what looks to be a very exciting and interesting engagement. PSR has been extremely successful despite the Board of Directors handling both day-to-day operations and strategy formulation and implementation. Their Board is incredibly dedicated to the cause of psychosocial rehabilitation and the recovery of persons with serious mental health issues. Working with Sue at PSR has been a pleasure and her enthusiasm and passion for the project is a strong motivator.

We presented our initial findings and approach at the Endeavour Mid-term Review and it was exciting to receive feedback from the other advisors and engagement teams who are further along in the process. It can be a little daunting starting something completely brand new but it has been very easy knowing that there are knowledgeable and approachable people just an email away.

Our project and subsequent recommendations offer an opportunity to positively impact PSR and its stakeholders. Helping make the organization more effective at delivering its key services is a very rewarding feeling. Being able to learn and be exposed to new experiences is pretty terrific as well.

The first month as an engagement manager for Endeavour has been busy, thrilling and an excellent way to meet bright, interesting and passionate people. I am confident that we are well on our way to providing PSR with fundamentally sound recommendations on how to improve their organization. I am looking forward to seeing what February has in store for us!

- Jared Simon, Engagement Manager

February 2008

We have made progress for our second month on the PSR project. Sue from PSR has been extremely helpful and quick in replying to our team's questions, and supplied us with two years of financial statements, including the national conference's income statement. I've conducted a very thorough analysis of PSR's financial statements. These data are useful in analyzing where PSR is going in terms of revenue and expenses, and determining which areas need improvement.

We had a team meeting with our advisor, Matt, to review and recommend on our methodology of tackling the issues that PSR face. We are still missing many data that PSR is not able to provide, so our source of information has shifted towards PSR members. We are in the process of creating a member survey that will be approved and sent out to PSR members via their email addresses. We hope that the member survey will provide us with the information we need to gain a better understanding of PSR's current situation. So far, we have discovered that PSR's member benefits and website need re-working.

We are expecting that by the end of March we'll have a full picture of PSR and its members so that we'll be able to start working on recommendations.

- Frank Zhang, Consultant

April 2008

We have just completed our fourth month on the PSR project. We have been working with only three consultants and it has been an exciting challenge balancing the workload. At the end of March we were lucky enough to add Sofia Stefou to the team. Having a fourth consultant will allow us to delve deeper into issues and provide PSR with a better final product.

We took the results of our Mid-term Review and have incorporated them into our Work Plan. This provided unique insight and aided our efforts to provide PSR with a multifaceted plan on how they can maintain a strong membership base while attracting new members.

We have made use of best practices from across a wide variety of industries to create a solid foundation on how PSR can create additional value for its members. This has also been an important part of the third stage of our focus – which includes outside sources of revenue, possible marketing efforts and a strategic review.

We are nearing the end of our project and I have learned a considerable amount about managing client expectations and consultant workloads. I believe that our work will enable PSR to better achieve its mission and am pleased to have been a part of the process thus far.

- Jared Simon, Engagement Manager

July 2008

We finally completed the PSR Canada project. We received lots help from Andrea Wong (Endeavour executive) and our project advisor, Matt Fullbrook. With them on the project, we were able to meet our deadline -- completing our research and delivering a final report to PSR Canada at the end of June.

We split our research into sections: member benefits, financial outlook, external funding, and marketing strategies, where each consultant took on one section and drafted sections of the report based on their research. These sections were compiled and organized into a full report of key findings and recommendations for improving membership retention and revenue generation. We had a final team meeting at the Toronto Reference Library to finalize the report.

Throughout the course of this project, we discovered that PSR Canada lacked information that would enable it to have a better understanding of its members and the benefits they seek from their membership. We were able to conduct an online survey through ConstantContacts to reach its members at a 15% response rate. Overall, the survey responses were extremely helpful to our team and PSR Canada in obtaining an understanding of what the members want. Thus, our recommendations in the report were vastly based on the survey findings.

Furthermore, we took best practices from successful peer organizations, such as US Psychiatric Rehabilitation Association (USPRA) and Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH), and proposed their tactical ideas to PSR as a guideline. As for new membership benefits to implement, we were able to summarize our recommendations into six categories: news, success stories, online forum, blog, Certified Psychosocial Rehabilitation Professional (CPRP) certification and local mini-workshops. We included the idea of partnering with peer organizations, such as Canadian Alliance on Mental Illness and Mental Health (CAMIMH), to leverage resources. We also recommended PSR Canada to consider external funding opportunities, such as government funding agencies and programs, grant-giving foundations, and donations.

At the end of the project, PSR Canada was happy with our work and recommendations. Many points touched in the report will be the basis of their board meetings to discuss how to increase the overall member base and promote psychosocial rehabilitation and PSR Canada further. This overall experience has been great for the entire team. We have learned a lot and are looking forward to continue to work on other projects with Endeavour in the near future.

- Frank Zhang, Consultant