Key Highlights
What was this case study? Showing the impact of using the Recovery Star within an Active Pathways residential mental health service, through the lens of an example of supporting one individual.
Why was the Recovery Star chosen? The Star helps provide a structured framework for conversations, reflection and review and creates a shared understanding for teams working with individuals of their strengths, support needs and aspirations.
What was the impact? Active Pathways reported the following key outcomes:
- Improved engagement in rehabilitation and therapeutic activities
- Greater insight into the individual’s experiences, needs and goals
- More effective multidisciplinary care planning and intervention delivery
- Increased confidence, motivation and ownership of progress
- Improved daily living skills and medication management
- Stronger relationships with family, staff and peers
- Greater independence and preparation for future transitions
“Having the Recovery Star as a shared resource also helps us plan and implement interventions, and encourages support workers to get behind specific, meaningful activities with individuals.” – Tom Lawless, Occupational Therapist
About Active Pathways
Active Pathways support people with complex mental health conditions, autism spectrum disorders, learning disabilities, and other complex needs. Their services, based across Lancashire and Yorkshire, offer a blend of therapeutic, residential, supported living and enhanced supported living services.
They have a strong therapeutic and clinical framework to support recovery and sustained progress and provide person-centred care, with personalised, evidenced-based support.
The Recovery Star (4th Edition)
The Recovery Star (4th Edition) is the Star for people with mental health and wellbeing needs. It was developed to support people with a wide range of short and long term mental health conditions. The Star aims to help people in their recovery, where ‘recovery’ may mean living well with mental health issues, rather than having no symptoms.
The Recovery Star helps people and the services supporting them identify progress towards key outcomes like managing mental health, physical health, relationships and trust and hope, and give clarity on where to focus next.
Using the Recovery Star at Active Pathways
Following on from our conversation with Active Pathways about their use of the Recovery Star across their services, this case study from the organisation explores how the Star is used across their services to support collaborative care planning, meaningful goal setting and outcome-focused rehabilitation.
The Recovery Star is used to provide a structured framework for conversations, reflection and review, and helps individuals identify priorities, recognise progress and take greater ownership of their recovery journey. For teams, it creates a shared understanding of an individual’s strengths, support needs and aspirations, helping to inform interventions and ensure that care remains focused on what matters most to the person.
An example of supporting an individual
Getting to know the individual
A young adult living with a diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia was admitted following several years of repeated hospital admissions and periods in secure settings.
On admission, he experienced significant difficulties with motivation, sleep routine, social engagement and daily structure, which limited his ability to engage fully in rehabilitation. While sociable and polite, he spent much of his time isolated in his room and found it difficult to translate aspirations for change into practical steps.
The multidisciplinary team worked alongside him to better understand his strengths, aspirations and support needs. The Recovery Star was introduced to support reflection, guide therapeutic input and strengthen collaborative care planning.
Having the Recovery Star as a shared resource helps us plan and implement interventions, and encourages support workers to get behind specific, meaningful activities with individuals.
How the Recovery Star was used
The Recovery Star was introduced as a core tool to support reflection, guide therapeutic input and strengthen collaborative care planning.
Used across Occupational Therapy, Psychology and the wider staff team, it provided a shared framework for exploring progress across key areas of recovery. Completed collaboratively during structured sessions, the Recovery Star helped the individual identify strengths, recognise areas for development and set realistic goals.
Its accessible language and visual format supported deeper conversations around motivation, identity and change, helping him explore areas that had previously felt overwhelming or difficult to address.
The Recovery Star also became embedded within monthly multidisciplinary team reviews, ensuring progress, priorities and agreed interventions remained central to care delivery. As Tom, an occupational Therapist at Active Pathways, reflects: “Occupational Therapy and Psychology reports can be a lot for people to go through, but because staff are becoming so familiar with the Recovery Star, it helps consolidate key information and share it across teams. Having the Recovery Star as a shared resource also helps us plan and implement interventions, and encourages support workers to get behind specific, meaningful activities with individuals.”
Impact of work using the Recovery Star with the individual
The work that the team did using the Recovery Star to work collaboratively with the individual had several key impacts:
Daily Living and Wellbeing
The individual successfully re-established a healthy sleep routine and became more consistent in managing medication and daily living tasks. Greater structure within his day supported increased engagement with rehabilitation and therapeutic activities.
Relationships and Engagement
He increased attendance at therapeutic groups, rebuilt contact with family members and became more involved in communal life within the service. Staff also observed increased trust, with the individual engaging positively with a wider range of team members rather than relying solely on preferred staff.
Confidence and Independence
The Recovery Star supported a meaningful shift in motivation. Goals that once felt unachievable were broken down into manageable steps, enabling the individual to take greater ownership of his progress.
This included independently introducing tools such as planners, alarms and budgeting strategies to support longer-term aspirations and build confidence in managing everyday responsibilities.
Supporting the next step
As the young person developed confidence and skills, the Recovery Star played an important role in supporting preparation for the next stage of the individual’s journey.
Progress reviews informed graded opportunities to increase independence, including moving to a self-contained flat within the service and managing aspects of daily living with reduced support.
This structured approach ensured support remained focused on the individual’s goals while adapting to changing needs and maintaining input from the wider multidisciplinary team.
Click here to learn more about Recovery Star (4th edition)