About

We’re a group of 12 people with a range of expertise, skills and knowledge.

We are all also people who have lived experience of mental health problems. That means we are people who’ve survived or are using mental health services, or prefer not to use them, or people who care about or support someone who’s experiencing mental distress. Other organisations use terms like ‘service user’ or ‘carer’, but we prefer one term that covers it all – we don’t like being labelled as either one thing or another.

We were brought together by CSIP (Care Services Improvement Programme) to work on a project called ROC (Routine Outcomes Collaborative). Teams from Trusts and organisations across the North West developed a series of outcomes including service or system outcomes, their clinical or care outcomes and service user and carer-determined outcomes. We worked with the teams assisting and influencing their work.

We received training in Plan, Do, Study, Act (PDSA) cycles and attended learning events where everyone shared best practice and successes.

There have been up to about 20 of us involved in the group. Some people have now moved on to full time jobs and don’t have the time to attend our meetings. We all stay in touch though.

We have had members from the majority of NHS Trusts in the North West – from Cumbria to Cheshire. Our members are all active at a local level so we know we’re in touch with local communities. Most members are also active nationally or internationally.

We’re a lively bunch of very different people, but we’ve stayed together through the life of the project and want to continue to meet, share our work with each other and influence regional services.