Everyone has life skills, knowledge, and their own lived experience which can influence how services are planned, delivered, development and evaluated. Involvement is about using your lived experiences to help us to learn and improve services, so that services are shaped to meet the needs of our local community. Involvement and Co-production is achieved through service users, family members and staff working together and is at the heart of everything we do.
Some people give lots of their time, some just a little every month or as a one off. Every one help us to understand how it feels to receive care within our services. This helps us to see what makes the biggest difference to people’s lives.
There are lots of ways you can use your lived experience as a service user or carer, please see involvement opportunities for more information.
Who can Apply?
- Anyone who has used our services or is a carer or family member of someone who has used our services
- You are willing to adhere to our Trust values and behaviours of Compassion, Respect, Integrity, and Trust
- You are happy to sign up to our Involvement Charter
What’s in it for me?
You will gain a real insight into how a mental health and community hospital trust works and how we listen to people’s feedback and involve people to make service improvements. Getting involved can be a good addition to your CV, particularly anyone interested in working for the NHS as a future career prospect. We would hope you will gain lots of transferable skills and hopefully the involvement activities will benefit as a confidence builder. We can offer you:
- A range of ways to get involved, tailored to your interest and involvement preferences
- An invitation to our Introduction to Involvement Workshop
- Access to a training and development programme to help you improve your involvement skills and confidence
- Reimbursement of out-of-pocket expenses
- Lived Experience Partner Roles
- Technical support with MS Teams
- Recognition for your input and time commitment
- Supporting statements for college or university or to help you develop a portfolio of experience
What to do if interested
The Patient Experience and Involvement Team can send out information to you in the post, or via email for you to provide feedback from your perspective which can be emailed back to us or sent via our freepost address.
You will need to register with the Patient Experience and Involvement Team and once we have received your completed form, you will join our Patient and Carer Involvement and where you will receive newsletters which contain information regarding current and future involvement opportunities. You can register via the online form on our web pages or print an easy read version and send it back to us.
Once you are registered, you will be invited to attend a virtual Introduction to Involvement Workshop (both a practical and strategic session) which includes:
- An introduction to the Trust
- Introduction to Step up to Great Patient Experience and Involvement Delivery Plan
- Sign up to our Involvement Charter
- Sign up to our Confidentiality Agreement
- Find out about and how to complete our skills, experience, needs and interest form
- Receive information on the training and support we can offer you
- Find out how to receive reimbursements through our Reward and Reimbursement Policy
- Receive your Involvement Pack