You are the expert.
How we choose to work together by having a team of Experts by Experience
“I learn more than I ever could through books and articles by speaking to and listening to people directly. I feel privileged that I get to work with the amazing group of individuals who are our Experts by Experience”
Staff Oxfordshire Mind
What is an Expert by Experience?
They are people who share with us their expertise and enable us to look at our work through a different lens. Our Experts by Experience help us to raise awareness, challenge stigma around mental health, improve services, and give their point of view about the work we do at Oxfordshire Mind.
Who are our Experts by Experience?
Our Experts by Experience are anyone who has experience of living with mental health problems. They work with us in an equal partnership to influence the planning, development, delivery, and evaluation of Oxfordshire Mind’s services. They use the lens of their experiences to help us to raise awareness, challenge stigma around mental health, improve services, and give their point of view about the work we do at Oxfordshire Mind and Mind in Berkshire. We believe meaningfully engaging people in our work will ensure it is informed by a broad range of experiences and will effectively meet diverse needs.
What do our Experts by Experience do?
Where possible we discuss and share ideas with our wider service user community but when we have projects that require a smaller working group we go to our Experts by Experience. These projects could involve looking together at the wording and design of a fundraising campaign to make sure our language and message is appropriate. It could be sharing a mental health journey at conference, co-producing training material or co-creating an Equality Diversity Inclusion and Equality policy.
How to become one of our Experts by Experience.
Just click on the link below to email us, or ask a member of staff to put you in touch with the involvement team. Don’t worry if you’ve never done anything like this before, we have an informal interview before getting started where we’ll talk to you about what support you might need, what types of projects you would be interested in and what you would like to get out of the experience. This can be to learn new skills, enhance a CV, meet new people, be involved in changing the mental health sector or all of those. We get together as a team online about once a month for a chat and a catch up and to check in how things are going. The time commitment is as much or as little as you like. When we have a project that comes in we share it with the team and if it is of interest then you can apply to be involved. We pay our Experts by Experience for their time and reimburse their travel expenses. We partner with the www.livingwage.org.uk, following their recommendations which are based on the cost of living because we believe people deserve a wage which meets everyday needs.
Apply now
If you think you’d make a great Expert by Experience then please get in touch.