077 What is recovery?

'Recovery' can simply be described as to regain, get back or restore something which has been lost, but in health and social care services we don't tend to go for the simple and straight forward, particularly when confused and complicated are on offer. I fully support the concept of recovery, as it was originally identified by service users, but I despair at how easily those in power feel able to misappropriate good ideas to dress up their otherwise complex demands. Now I tend to see recovery as something designed by service users, hijacked by commissioners, managers and politicians, and crashed by practitioners. In this episode I explore how a uniquely personal and individual concept of great merit and purpose has become subsumed into the corporate world of strategic direction, and subsequently lost in translation. The original pioneers foretold in warnings of how the concept will lose its power when it becomes systematised, but the world of bureaucracy is not known for heeding warnings, particularly if they don't appeal to the perpetual need to homogenise the individual experience.