Help us to help you: How we are using lived experience to shape our services

SPFT is aspiring to become a more diverse workplace where staff from all backgrounds and a variety of life experiences feel like they belong. It's also important to us that our workforce reflects the diverse communities that we serve and we know that diverse teams work better, delivering the best possible patient care. Therefore, as a Trust that provides specialist mental health, learning disability and neurodevelopmental care, it is especially important that people with lived experience of these conditions are included in our approach to inclusion.

We value the expertise that people with lived experience can offer to help shape the design, development, delivery and evaluation of our services, whether that is in specific lived experience roles, or in any role across the Trust. We also recognise the barriers to recruitment faced by people with lived experience, and are actively working to remove these barriers through an inclusive recruitment initiative.

What is Lived Experience?

Quite simply, lived experience is knowledge you can only gain from going through something. We want to include people with lived experience of mental ill-health, learning disabilities and neurodivergence in the fabric of our Trust, to ensure that the voices of those with direct experience with our services are listened to.

Embedding a lived experience approach centres people with first-hand insight within our care, offering perspectives and understanding that are unlikely already captured by staff who do not have this direct experience. Staff with lived experience are able to relate and empathise with service users and shape the delivery of our services with their unique expertise.

Lived Experience Roles

At Sussex Partnership, our Engagement department works closely with three different lived experience staff groups:

Experts by Experience (EbE)

• An Expert by Experience is someone who is using or has used our services in the last 5 years. EbEs provide sessional work within the Trust to represent the service user or carer perspective and contributes ideas for improvement. They may participate on recruitment panels, attend committee meetings or contribute to a Quality Improvement project.

Peer Support Worker

• A Peer Support Worker has lived experience of mental ill-health, or other experiences relevant to our services, such as neurodivergence or contact with the criminal justice system. Peer Support workers use their skills to build relationships with service users to share learning, support development and new perspectives.

?Peer Trainer

• Peer Trainers have lived experience and uses it to develop and deliver training around relevant subjects. Peer Trainers also develop specialist skills in training and facilitation, attending specific course and gaining a qualification.

Beyond Lived Experience Roles

Beyond roles that where lived experience is specifically recruited for, we also believe there is a great benefit in having people with lived experience in roles throughout the Trust. Whether it is in clinical roles as nurses, healthcare assistants or occupational therapists, or in our administrative or facilities departments, the expertise and insight that people with this lived experience can bring to our services is invaluable.

To support these members of staff, the Valuing Lived Experience (VaLE) Staff Network was set up to advocate for and support staff who have had an experience of mental health distress in their lives and to fight the stigma that still surrounds being a "professional" who also happens to have lived experience of mental health difficulties.

Kerry, VaLE Staff Network Co-chair, shared the below about the support offered to staff:

"Staff networks are funny things, you do not have to attend any meetings to be a member, you do not have to engage with a network to get anything out of them. For some people having monthly newsletters and emails from us is enough. Other people have really appreciated having a space where they can be open and honest about having a lived experience whilst working with people with mental health difficulties. Often, as professionals, it is expected that we remain boundaried and 'should not' directly draw on our own lived experience with patients in the same way as peer support workers can. This constraint can feel stifling and sometimes overwhelming, like we cannot or do not see our staff. Another way people use the network is that they can come to us for advice and guidance around issues that they are having at work.

"Unfortunately, stigma is still out there in the world and whilst everyone I see who works at SPFT is trying their hardest to reduce stigma and discrimination for patients, sometimes we overlook staff who have the same experience. Network members know what it feels like to be mentally unwell and they do not want other people to feel the same as they have, this makes them excellent and empathic practitioners. If we are to keep these amazing staff members, we need to ensure that there continues to be a safe and supportive space for them."

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If you have lived experience of mental health, learning disabilities or neurodevelopmental disorders and want to find a role that suits you, please visit our careers site to find more information, vacancies and application support.