Community Mental Health has committed to developing and implementing a Lived Experience Charter, aiming to improve the recruitment and retention of a larger, more diverse, inclusive and representative workforce. The charter will focus on policy, organisational culture and positive practices to:
- Support open and inclusive recruitment of people with lived experience
- Raise awareness within our organisation of the benefits of employing people with lived experience, barriers faced and how to overcome these
- Provide people with lived experience the support they need from the start of their employment journey
- Develop clear progression pathways for people with lived experience
- Develop a workplace environment and culture that is free form discriminatory practices, unconscious bias or prejudice
- Share good practice and ensure co production of our services with people with lived experience.
A Trust Carers Strategy has been developed, identifying five key priorities:
1. Recognise and support carers
2. Identify and support young carers to achieve their full potential
3. Improve skills and training for carers and the workforce
4. Keep carers connected and involved
5. Carer diversity to be affectively and meaningfully supported.
The Trust Carers Strategy has now been ratified and planning is taking place of how to implement the priorities within the service line.
Mersey Care aims to ensure a leading edge reputation for its work in the sphere of patient, carer and community engagement and participation. To achieve this vision within the scope of the transformation programme, it’s crucial that we embed patient, carer, and community voice through all of the transformation workstreams. By listening to them, we can understand how people think, feel and experience the care we offer as a Trust and achieve meaningful co production in the designing of services.
To support the new transformation workstreams, we are developing Clinical Advisory Groups where Service Users and Carers will be engaged to give feedback on quality improvement ideas proposed from the transformation workstreams.
A standard operating procedure to support recruitment and retention of people with lived experience has been developed and will be implemented within the Lived Experience Charter workstream.