Local Lived Experience Lead

**Local Lived Experience Lead**

**Responsible to**: Local Lived Experience Lead

**Accountable to**: PCP Chief Executive & Board of Trustees

**Located**: Hybrid with home working and significant reach across County Durham

**Starting salary**: Starting Salary £30,729 per annum

**Salary scale**:Scale Points 14-17, £30,729 - £33,611 per annum

**Hours**: 37 hours per week

**Term**: Fixed until 31st March 2026

**DBS Status**: Enhanced

Community Mental Health Transformation (CMHT)

Pioneering Care Partnership is working closely with fellow NHS organisations, local authorities, voluntary and community organisations and people with lived experience to transform the way adult community mental health care and support is delivered in County Durham.

The transformation forms part of a national programme set out in the NHS Long Term Plan to enable adults with mental illness to access services in a new, more joined up and effective way, regardless of their diagnosis or level of complexity.

Community Mental Health Transformation will offer flexible and personalised care and support that responds to a person’s mental health needs and preferences close to home, while also increasing support for the wider factors that can impact someone’s wellbeing, such as employment, housing, and physical health. To achieve this, partners are working together in local clusters within the county.

**Job Purpose**

The key purpose of this role is to build community / service user networks and experience of co-production approaches to ensure that the voice of lived experience shapes the system change work within the programme.

You will be a part of a wider Lived Experience Team, working in a range of voluntary and community sector organisations across county Durham to support the development and delivery of transformation.

1. Co-ordinate and support people with lived experience to ensure lived experience informs and shape the day-to-day work, projects, direction, and decision-making within the mental health transformation programme.

2. Work with the team across County Durham; championing lived experience and advocating co-production in the operational delivery of services.

3. Support the transformation of services across the system, promoting innovative and creative ways of working with service users and carers and peer support staff, advocating for cocreation, co-production, and partnership working.

4. Develop and facilitate community focus groups / forums / surveys / one to one meetings to identify themes and issues around the operational work and support with identifications of matters for systemic change that will positively affect people with multiple and complex needs.

5. Work with organisations which may already involve people with lived experience of mental health services or mental ill-health, and their carers, and explore how they can engage with this programme. Ensure this includes engagement with seldom heard groups and individuals, in order that views collected are representative of the wider community and their needs in terms of mental health services.

6. Support the development of people’s confidence and skills within the hub. Seek out the best ways to capture experience and learning; and be able to operate with resilience, flexibility, and integrity.

7. Be an active part of the Lived Experience Steering group holding the CMHT Steering Group accountable for engagement and involvement of service user, carer, family, and community when making decisions, championing the service user experience at meetings.

8. Work collaboratively with other Local Lived Experience Leads across the County to share learning and practice, contributing to service improvement/systems change and amplifying the lived experience voice in CMHT.

9. Contribute to providing and developing service user responses through development and maintenance of networks with partner agencies and stakeholders.

10. Contribute to the creation and development of a diverse and inclusive culture across the transformation.

11. Contribute to the delivery of training, shared learning and the development of online resources.

12. Develop and maintain excellent working links/partnerships with colleagues, external agencies and all available resources that support delivery.

13. Promote wider awareness of the transformation project, with the focus of raising a greater understanding of the role of lived experience in it.

14. Positively promote a positive image of people with mental health conditions and learning disabilities. Challenge discrimination where appropriate.

15. Have an appreciation of the social factors of mental ill health and the compounding effects of health inequalities i.e., social exclusion from mainstream activities, discrimination, stigma etc which contribute to extraordinary physical ill health.

16. To take minutes of meetings attended (where appropriate).

**Job Types**: Full-time, Fixed term contract
Contract length: 8 months

Pay: £30,729