At Rethink Mental Illness, we believe that people with lived experience of mental illness and their carers, friends and family are the experts, which is why we call them Experts by Experience.
Co-production and Involvement is one of the guiding principles of our five-year strategy. Both are essential to achieving our ambition of ensuring maximum quality of life for people affected by mental illness - leading to more accessible, equitable and fit-for-purpose services.
We aspire to ensure the voices of people with lived experience of mental illness are at the heart of everything we do and that people are heard and valued. Everyone at Rethink has a role to play in ensuring that people with lived experience and carers have opportunities to be meaningfully involved in our work.
Whether you join us in service delivery, policy development, or support roles, your contributions will amplify the power of inclusion and shared ownership in shaping meaningful change for people affected by mental illness.
What is involvement?
Involvement means ensuring that people with lived experience of mental illness, as well as carers, have a meaningful voice in shaping decisions, services, and policies. It’s about sharing power, influence, and responsibility to create real change.
The term involvement is an umbrella term and covers a range of approaches, including leadership, co-production, engagement, and consultation - all of which help ensure that those directly affected by mental illness play an active role in decisions that impact them.
Involvement and coproduction happen in many different ways at Rethink as well as what has been mentioned previously; Expert by Experience Leaders are involved in system transformation, within policy influencing and campaigning and within strategy and governance. This approach ensures our work is shaped by real-world insights, making it relevant, responsive, and genuinely transformative.
How we embed the involvement of Experts by Experience in our work
- Service design and delivery: We seek to involve people with lived and caring experience in shaping our services, from design and planning to delivery. By working alongside them in decisions about their care and the way services operate, we create support that is more responsive, effective, and tailored to real needs.
- Policy and advocacy: Through our advisory boards and community engagement, Expert by Experience insights shape our policy influencing and campaigning work.
- Everyday practices: Involvement isn’t a one-off; it’s woven into the fabric of how we operate, from shaping strategies to making small but meaningful changes in our day-to-day work.