This case study was written with content provided by Rethink Sheffield. If you would like to know more about the service please contact [email protected]
Aspirations of the service
We want to:
- Form and develop the Mental Health Collaborative and use it as a dedicated resource to promote, facilitate and embed lived experience at all levels of mental health transformation and achieve improvements across Sheffield.
- Provide networking opportunities across mental health service stakeholders, Voluntary Community Social Enterprise (VCSE) organisations and experts by experience to identify and share best practice, develop toolkits and advise commissioners, service providers and other stakeholders.
- Provide information, advice and support to mental health boards, delivery groups and wider audiences in relation to supporting a continuous improvement of mental health services in Sheffield.
- Utilise wellbeing and whole population approaches including housing, education, prevention, social inclusion and determinants of wellbeing to recommend and support improvements to local pathways and service delivery.
Aims of the service
These are to:
- Set up, facilitate and support a Steering Group of experts by experience to contribute to mental health transformation and delivery in Sheffield.
- Coproduce a shared view of NHS priorities for the city to improve individuals’ experiences and outcomes.
- Connect with other lived experience groups in Sheffield to maximise further opportunities to collaborate and reach different communities.
The process
The process of putting the service together started with identifying and contacting stakeholders, engagement work within lived experience working groups and recruiting a Mental Health Collaborative Coordinator.
The next part of the process involved supporting current experts by experience to become part of the Mental Health Collaborative Steering Group, if they wished to do so.
Following this, steps will be taken to hold culture change workshops to develop a collective vision, ethos and guiding principles; and develop joint working and information sharing protocols, as well as planning how recommendations will be captured for representation at wider boards and steering groups.
The next step will be to establish a process for identifying focussed lines of enquiry and projects to be published for organisations to submit expressions of interest for grants to deliver this insight work as well as establishing and implementing governance arrangements for grants.
The final part of the process will be to co-produce a logic model and evaluation framework using Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) e.g., engagement with underserved groups and diversity; assessing whether people with lived experience have felt involved, listened to and valued throughout.
Achievements
A huge achievement has been increasing engagement with organisations that we may not have linked with otherwise. We have also raised awareness in lived experience groups, linked and engaged with Individual Placement Support (IPS) leads and offered pathways for them to develop from engagement experience they have been a part of.
Challenges
The challenges that we foresaw when setting up the service and the existing challenges are ensuring that we have continued engagement with people with lived experience and that people with lived experience continue to participate.
Another challenge is to have the funding and resources to develop lived experience roles and use our experience of system changes to move these roles from voluntary to paid work.
Future plans
Our primary aim over the next few months is to continue to develop the Mental Health Collaborative Steering Group and Board and to encourage people with lived experience to join and contribute moving forwards. We’re also currently onboarding our new Mental Health Collaborative Coordinator, so will be focussing on helping them get settled into the role and making progress with our aims and objectives.
Reflections
It’s been a really positive step for the Trust to make lived experience a feature of system changes and also to help to ensure that lived experience voices are heard in areas of influence.
We hope that setting up the service and ensuring that people with lived experience have the opportunity to share their views, that this will become a key part of service delivery and planning in the future. We also hope that the connections created between services and people with linked experience are valued and continue to flourish and develop to enable future joined up working.
Testimonials
We have commissioned the Mental Health Collaborative because we know how important it is to have Experts by Experience involved in decision making.
We need Experts by Experience to tell us what is important from them and others in the city who use services. It’s been great to be involved in setting the Collaborative up, and really great to be at the launch in November.
We are really looking forward to being involved in the next steps of the Collaborative – we hope it will direct our energies towards Sheffield’s services making the biggest difference possible to people’s lives and their mental and emotional health and wellbeing.
We are looking forward to more and more Experts by Experience getting involved, and more and more of the city’s services to get involved too and be shaped and designed by the voice of local people.
Louisa King, Head of Commissioning – Mental Health, Learning Disabilities, Dementia and Autism
