“Laura, I’ve got some good news.”

By Laura Wood, lived experience practitioner

I was perched on the stairs with the phone to my ear, and Suki Westmore at Mind was calling to tell me that I’d been selected as one of the lived experience facilitators on a project to develop quality assurance principles for maternal mental health peer support.

Once we had hung up and my victory dance was complete, I began to consider the practicalities – and, I suppose, to form my expectations. I had undertaken a fair amount of mental health involvement work already in various contexts and I thought I knew the drill. I was used to feeling, as a “service user” rather than someone from a third sector background or a clinician, that I was seen as a bit second-rate, less skilled, and only really useful for rehearsing my own story. 

Once someone genuinely patted me on the head. Decades of poor mental health meant that I hadn’t achieved the big dreams I’d always had and this, coupled with the fact that as a lived experience practitioner I was effectively patronised for a living, meant that I felt permanently frustrated and that my confidence was pretty low.

I anticipated that I would be helping to plan and deliver some consultation events and focus groups, which I did – but I was also treated as an equal partner in designing and delivering the project as a whole. This was totally unexpected and an absolute game-changer. It wasn’t true co-production, as the structure and timeline of the work was established before I came on board and we weren’t able to conduct the interviews or write the principles themselves, but staff intentionally gave us as much agency as they possibly could at every opportunity. This meant that we were invited to the table whenever there was a decision to be made. 

We met with the funders. We networked and promoted what we were doing. We designed and delivered every detail of those events and focus groups. We gave feedback on everything we couldn’t actually do ourselves within the parameters of the project, and changes were made accordingly. Budgets were managed so that we were paid fairly for our time, which made me feel valued and valuable, and enabled us to do the work justice.

The co-design process offered the perfect combination of autonomy and support. It showed me that I can make things happen, take the lead, that my expertise can be recognised and valued by others. I felt a powerful sense of ownership over the project, and I was encouraged further by enthusiasm amongst the wider maternal mental health community. 

Everyone who participated was so passionate and invested in good peer support for mums; many went above and beyond, emailing me resources to inform the work and checking in regularly to ask how it was going. It was a privilege – and very validating - to be their point of contact, to be associated with a piece of work which they recognised as so important and so needed. True co-production is rare, but I hope this example has demonstrated some of the benefits when we aspire toward and actively pursue that ideal.