The first of our Innovation Insights webinars launches on Wednesday 13 September with a session on involving people with lived experience to transform mental health services. The session links in with World Patient Safety Day 2023, which takes place on Sunday 17 September.
Deborah Wilson, who works in the Patient and Public Leadership and Equalities Team at the East Midlands AHSN, tells us more….
For the last 2 and a half years I have had the absolute privilege of working as part of a team, setting up a programme to involve people with lived experience of mental health difficulties, as strategic advisors to our Mental Health Safety Improvement network.
I am passionate about patient and public involvement. The NHS professionals I come across are dedicated, highly skilled and well trained, but to arrive at truly effective innovations there needs to be something added to this mix of expertise - the perspective of someone with the lived experience of having a condition and using the services we are trying to improve. The combination of both perspectives makes for successful solutions – sometimes to problems that professionals didn’t even know they had.
The Mental Health Safety Improvement Network, funded by the Mental Health Alliance, consists of representatives from every mental health trust in the East Midlands. It aims to transform and improve mental health inpatient services, working across 3 workstreams: Reducing Restrictive Practice, Preventing Suicide and Self-harm and Sexual Safety. Each of these groups is supported by people with lived experience so that the patient perspective is integral to every change and solution proposed.
My role is to support the networks, advise on approaches to Patient and Public Involvement and particularly to support the lived experience contributors that advise the groups. It is an absolute privilege and pleasure to work with this amazing group of former service users who give their time, insight, and expertise to help improve services for future users. I am also fortunate to work with a dedicated and committed group of network members and with my supportive and skilled Patient and Public Involvement Leadership Team.
We have worked hard to develop our approach to involvement and are proud of what we have achieved within the network. And now for the icing on the cake - our work has been shortlisted for a national Innovation Award. To celebrate this and to highlight our achievements, we are delivering a free webinar to share our approach with others and talk about what we think are the ingredients behind our success, so that others may feel confident in adopting similar approaches to working with people with lived experience. It will be co-presented by myself, Sue Wheatcroft, Lived Experience Contributor and Kay Khan, Head of Improvement Programme Delivery, on 13 September 12-12:45pm.
Find out more and register to attend here.