Involving people

Co-production – involving people with an equal say in the design, development and, increasingly, delivery of services – is at the heart of the Alliance’s way of working. 

Context and key challenges

The people we support consistently tell us that they want to work with people who have similar experiences as them. This helps them to feel more comfortable in sharing their stories and being fully understood.

Similarly, when we design and develop services it is crucial that people who use these services and those that care for them are genuinely involved, with real power to help shape them.

What we offer

Peers

We have peers (people with lived experience of mental health issues) working to support people in each of our Living Well Centres. We also have peers who support people in our inpatient beds, helping them to be prepared for when they are ready to be discharged. 

CAPSA

Our award winning CAPSA (Culturally Appropriate Peer Support and Advocacy) service employs peers from our local Black communities to ensure our services fully understand the experiences and needs of these communities. This helps those being supported feel that our services ‘get me’ and to build trust with the mental health system.

The South London and Maudsley’s Lambeth Service User and Carer Advisory Group (SUCAG)

The South London and Maudsley’s Lambeth Service User and Carer Advisory Group (SUCAG) continues to be a vital way in which people with lived experience can get involved in shaping and delivering mental health services. People are paid for their time whilst working with like-minded people and making a real difference. We are actively looking for more people to get involved.  If you’d like to find out more, email Alice Glover on Alice.Glover@slam.nhs.uk, or go to www.slam.nhs.uk/involvement-register.

Carers

We refer to people who look after their family, friends and neighbours – either full or part time – as carers. Carers are a vital part of the health and care system, giving up their time, usually with no financial support, to care for someone. We are increasingly realising how important it is to involve carers when we are supporting people with their mental health. Carers will usually spend much more time with the person then we do and will know them much better, seeing signs of when they are getting worse and knowing what works when they are distressed. We are working closely with the Carers’ Hub Lambeth a Brixton based charity that works with carers aged 5 and upwards – to increase carers’ involvement in our services.

We run an online fortnightly support group for carers on a Tuesday evening. Led by Lee Roach, Lambeth’s Head Occupational Therapist, alongside a community pharmacist, the group provides support to carers, help to navigate the local health and care system, problem solving, signposting and advice. We always welcome more carers to join this group, if you are interested please email Lee Roach

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Our impact

We ask people who use our services and their carers to complete a survey, which can be done anonymously. The survey can be completed on paper or online and is managed by the South London and Maudsley NHS Trust.

The survey asks five questions:

1. Overall, how was your experience of our service?
2. Where possible, were you involved in decisions about your assessment, care or treatment?
3. Do you feel that the assessment, care or treatment you received was suited to your needs?
4. Were you satisfied with the way staff communicated with you?
5. Were you satisfied with the facilities and environment?

The chart shows the percentage of people who answered ‘very good’ or ‘good’ to each question in the twelve months to March 2025. It is divided into response from those using inpatients (beds) and community services. As you can see, inpatients scores are significantly lower than community services. We think this is partly because most people do not want to be an inpatient, especially if they have been ‘sectioned’ (admitted by law) but nonetheless we want these scores to improve and be much closer to the community scores.

Community commissioners 

We’ve introduced these new roles to employ people with experience of or interest in Lambeth mental health services to be part of our top-level decision-making groups and to help review our services. Community Commissioners are supported and mentored by experienced staff and are reimbursed for their time, which is around one or two days per week. 

Solidarity in a Crisis

This is an out of hours Crisis Line (delivered by Certitude) that provides peer support over the phone for adults experiencing a mental health crisis. It is open Monday to Friday from 6pm to midnight and Saturday and Sunday from midday to midnight – Freephone 0300 123 1922

Our next steps

We are increasing service user and carer involvement in our decision-making and aim to expand our CAPSA service, further increasing the number of peers working in our Alliance services.

We have introduced a ‘Triple Leadership’ approach to improving our services. The Triple Leadership are service user or carer, a community representative and a staff representative. This trio leads the group that is developing our community mental health services.