The Trust Wide Enablement Partnership is our collaboration with Barnet, Enfield and Haringey Mental Health Trust (BEH). Part of the work of the Partnership focuses on building a culture within BEH where the lived experience of staff members is viewed as an asset, as something that can add another layer of expertise on top of learned experience.
In 2019, the Partnership created a forum with various staff at BEH with lived experience of mental health challenges. In this forum, staff were able to share experiences and identify what steps to take to make staff’s lived experience an asset to the organisation. This group evolved into a Trustwide Quality Improvement (QI) project on Lived Experience in the Workplace.
The group has explored a number of ideas to improve how BEH values and draws on staff’s personal experiences. One idea was to develop a regular feature in Trust Matters magazine which is a Trust publication with stories about what is happening within the Trust, available to both BEH staff and the public. This feature will be for staff to share their experience of mental health challenges and opportunities more widely.
We had a great response to our call for contributions, with many staff wanting to share their stories. We are now pleased to share with you the most recent Trust Matters publication containing stories from staff about their own lived experience of mental health challenges and how this has informed their work.
With more staff being open about the triumphs and challenges of working in mental health services with lived experience, we can work to challenge mental health stigma in the workplace and build a more inclusive future in mental health services.
Read the stories in the full edition here.
You can read more about the Enablement Partnership and the work we do here.