The Pod

‘What THE POD do is innovative, radical and socially engaged’ NHS England  

Sitting within Coventry City Council Adult Social Care and significantly funded by the Integrated Care Board (ICB).  The Pod, is an award-winning secondary mental health social brokerage and cultural hub which represents a new progressive and values driven within local authority adult social care, one that focuses on critical connections and a shift from service user/patient to citizenship and agency. 

Committed to a human centred and rights-based approach to secondary mental health relationships and see’s The Pod deliver this through an innovative, unique and dynamic personalised social brokerage model.  The Pod aims to build individual, organisational and/or societal capacity for creativity, innovation, compassion and activism and each arm of their work asserts the importance of cultivating authentic connection with the city, its creatives, entrepreneurs, academics, industry leaders, change makers, quiet activists and the under heard. As an outcome of The Pod’s approach unexpected (and often unconventional) bridges to sector experts, employment, just things that matter are forged, sustained and made real.  

 ‘[The Pod] challenges national assumptions around what and how social care can deliver’ (TLAP) 

 The Pod have asserted National influence through work with TLAP, Public Health England, National Development Team For Social Inclusion In Mental Health, Local Government Association and presenting to the Health and Social Care Committee in Parliament. We aim to secure fast, firm and sustainable outcomes. 

The Pod believe that recovery and regeneration are totally intertwined and is determined to create conditions in which everyone has voice and can thrive – the city is its people. 

In 2014 to forge a more radical, purposeful, environmentally conscious and regenerative connection with the city, The Pod launched its social activism program ‘Food Union’ and its sister program Time Union, this dynamic union of likeminded people were, and remain pivotal in the evolution of The Pod Café - moving it from training kitchen to its status now as a café celebrated nationally for its unique take on ‘soil to table’ vegan cuisine and social eating.

‘Food Union – as the name implies – uses the simple power of food to bring communities together, to find healthier ways of producing and eating food, but also of thinking about and enacting community and civic identity’ Dr Chris Maughan.

‘The quiet activism of THE POD is also a deep activism, a unique case of civic care for people, places, land and multi-species, at a time when civic care is aggressively being eroded through calls to austerity, auditing and capital’ Dr Nirmal Puwar, Reader in Sociology, Goldsmiths, University of London.  Self-proclaimed Writer As Resident in Coventry

If you are a Care Coordinator and you would like to refer a person you are currently working with, please complete The Pod referral form