Recovery journey of psychiatric patients is rarely simple and straightforward. Due to complexity of mental illness, functional level and carer support are important aspects besides conventional biopsychosocial domains. Treatment plans aim at functional recovery with community reintegration. Taking the opportunities of direction of reduction of long-stay psychiatric patients, and surging demands of psychiatric service, service model of recovery-oriented care, community approach has been adopted for many years. Enhancement and consolidation of community support with collaboration with care-providers in the community is crucial. Taskgroup was set up in 2014 comprising Hospital Authority, Social Welfare Department and major psychiatric NGOs to establish medicosocial collaboration model for mental health. Yet Hong Kong East Cluster (HKEC) has long history and experience collaborating with community partners well before that. Previous piece-meal, project-based approach was reformed and restructured during Community Health Service Planning Workup back in 2005. Besides “Mental Health” being one of the 7 community platforms in HKEC, old age psychiatry (Psychogeriatric Team) is active member of Elderly community platform working with elderly community service providers serving physical and mental health needs of ageing population of HKEC. In the past decade, the Mental Health community platform of HKEC has evolved with establishments of different subspecialty psychiatric services, e.g. substance misuse, Comprehensive Child Development Service, etc. Meeting the challenges of COVID-19 since 2020, various collaboration programmes adopting refined approach have been designed and delivered.
