Lived Experience and Co-Production

The North London Forensic Collaborative Patient Council that consists of inpatients from adult secure services in each of the five provider Trusts and is a sub-group of the Board. The Patient Council meets weekly via Microsoft Teams and is facilitated by Inclusion Unlimited, a lived experience voluntary organisation that specialises in co-production.

The partnership between Inclusion Unlimited and North London Forensic Collaborative is in place with the aim of making positive change, breaking down stigma, improving quality of service and improving care.

The Patient Council’s main function is to represent the voices of inpatients and play a central role in the co-design of quality improvements and new innovative service developments, in collaboration with ward staff and the Commissioning Team.

Patient Council members are provided with training and supervision, which can lead to a career pathway into Peer Engagement Worker paid roles within the Commissioning Team, as well as further Expert by Experience roles within the community.

A key achievement of the Patient Council has been the design and implementation of a patient led ‘Speak Up Campaign’ to support service users in raising concerns, to feel empowered to speak up and confident that any issues raised are taken seriously. A consultation with service users took place to find out if they knew how to raise a concern, any barriers they encountered and what support was required to make the process easier. A key outcome of this has been the design and implementation of Patient Empowerment Boxes, which are secure feedback boxes that will be visible on all our inpatient wards, forming part of a patient led Speak Up campaign led by services for service users.

Read the Patient Council Newsletters here 

The North London Forensic Collaborative has a Peer Engagement Worker team which includes six paid staff who have lived experience of forensic or inpatient mental health services, recruited to work alongside case managers in a quality assurance role. The team has recently been expanded to include a community Peer Engagement Worker to extend this role across all inpatient and community services.

Using their lived experience, Peer Engagement Workers build rapport with service users and gather important insights from wards. They also provide a strong communicative link between service users, providers and the commissioning hub. They are present on wards and in community teams speaking directly to patients about their care experience, to ensure that the voice of service users is central to all aspects of quality improvement and service development. Peer Engagement Workers also assist with reviews of restrictive interventions, conduct service reviews and report into contract meetings.

Peer Engagement Workers Leaflet  [pdf] 1MB

The North London Forensic Collaborative has a Community Connectors Expert by Experience team which includes ten paid staff who have lived experience of forensic, inpatient mental health services, or learning disability and autism services, and represent each of the specialist community forensic teams that operate in North, West and East London.

Community Connectors use their lived experience to ensure that the voices of people who use community forensic services are central to the way North London Forensic Collaborative designs and delivers community forensic services, supporting us to deliver services that meets the needs of people who use them.

The Community Connectors play a critical role in supporting the Commissioning Team to plan, deliver and evaluate the Voluntary, Community, Faith and Social Enterprise Organisation Grant Programme.   The Grant Programme allow us to work more closely with local charities and community organisations, by funding them to deliver projects that will provide meaningful activities to forensic service users in the community, with a focus on learning new skills, improving wellbeing, reducing isolation and building social connections.  

The North London Forensic Collaborative works in partnership with service users, providers and staff in its adult secure services to design, deliver and embed a user involvement model that empowers and elevates the voices of people who use services, ensuring that they are central to the way services are commissioned and quality assured. The lived experience model ensures that people with a learning disability and autistic people experience equal rights and have the same opportunities as others accessing adult secure inpatient and community services that are tailored to their needs.  

The North London Forensic Collaborative Learning Disability and Autism Strategy 2024 2027 focuses on the people who use forensic services in North London who have a learning disability and autistic people. We want to ensure that those who need and use our services receive the highest quality of care close to home through local community teams and support networks.

Our Learning Disability and Autism Strategy Six Priority Areas:

Priority 1: People who use forensic services and their families and carers should be involved in the commissioning, development, and evaluation of
services, in partnership with commissioners and providers.

Priority 2: The inpatient population must be defined by their offending risk, mental disorder and need for a specialist forensic model of care.

Priority 3: Treatment should be time-limited, safe, and effective. It should be needs-led and based on the best available evidence.

Priority 4: Services should be delivered in an environment that is conducive to recovery.

Priority 5: There should be a continued transition from a hospital-based model of care to a community-based model of care.

Priority 6: There should be parity of access to appropriate care for women with a learning disability and autistic women.