Our Lived Experience Partnership
Helping to ensure that mental health professionals, support, and care, are the best they can be for everyone.
It is important to continually remind yourself that it is ultimately about the people receiving the service, not the people who are running it.
Oliver Wood, Lived Experience Consultant
Working in partnership
People with lived experience of mental health services are best placed to help improve those services.
The insights of our lived experience partners ground our work and we are committed to ensuring they are at the heart of everything we do.
Providing expertise and insight
Our lived experience partners help us bridge the gap between theory and reality, contributing to our charity’s flagship training programme and wider work.
Designing and implementing our programme
Our lived experience partners help design our approach to the recruitment, assessment, and selection of applicants to our mental health social work training programme. Many are also assessors in the assessment days.
Contributing to our programme’s academic curriculum
We’re pleased to have our lived experience partners directly involved in the teaching of our training programme. They lead teaching sessions, facilitate workshops and assess trainee role plays at the initial five-week Summer Institute. Some have also featured in educational videos produced for specific training modules.
Providing strategic counsel for our charity
Our lived experience partners are regularly consulted on about our work. They contribute to our strategic planning and support with specific aspects including, for example, the language we use to discuss mental health, and ongoing diversity and inclusion priorities.
Responding to national policy consultations
Whenever we respond to government consultations, we seek engagement from the Lived Experience Partnership. Lived experience partners have contributed to calls for evidence to the major conditions strategy, and the Department of Health and Social Care’s mental health and wellbeing consultation.
Raising awareness of mental health needs
Sharing personal experiences can be a powerful way to influence practice, policy, and promote better understanding of what it is like to live with mental health needs. Lived experience partners collaborate on pieces with us and speak at a range of events and conferences.
Hear from some of our lived experience partners
Rebecca Regler
“What struck me about becoming a service user was the felt experience. Did I feel heard? Did I feel cared for? Did I feel empathy?”
In this article, written for the British Journal of Social Work, Rebecca reflects on her journey from social worker to service user and finally now, expert by experience.
Read Rebecca’s reflections on becoming an expert by experience
Caroline Butterwick
“For me, one of the unexpected benefits of service user involvement is the chance to take ownership of my narrative.”
Caroline contributes to various aspects of our work, helping, as she says, “link lived experience with social work theory”. Here she explains how sharing her experience helps make sense of the past and shape the future of social work.
Read Caroline’s article about being a lived experience partner
Values and principles
- Co-production and inclusion
Using shared values and principles to create supportive environments where everyone feels included. - Equality and understanding
Working together as equal partners while understanding and celebrating differences. - Creativity and innovation
Leveraging ideas to drive innovation. - Recognition and respect
Valuing all contributions, taking responsibility for ourselves and treating each other with respect. - Purpose and impact
Staying focused yet flexible and striving for positive change.
Find out more
For further information about the work of our Lived Experience Partnership, please contact:
livedexperiencepartnership@thinkahead.org