Who has helped create the PARTNERS Service?

The PARTNERS Service has been co-created by different groups of people; service user and carer advisors, researchers and clinicians. We have involved people with experience of ongoing mental health needs as members of our Lived Experience Advisory Panels, researchers and mental health professionals. 

Each area taking part in the study has an advisory group called a Lived Experience Advisory Panel (LEAP). The three LEAPs have helped shaped our research plans and the PARTNERS Service. LEAP Members are people who have experience of ongoing mental health needs themselves, or help care for those who do.

These LEAPs are supported by The McPin Foundation charity, which specialises in involving people affected by mental health in research.

By taking into account the thoughts and feelings of people with experience of ongoing mental health needs, we are able to gain insight into what others may want and need from mental health services.

We believe that this is an essential part of creating good mental health research. People with expertise from experience provide a different perspective to those who have not experienced mental health services. By working together as a team of people with different expertise we hope to produce a new way of working that best meet the needs of people with ongoing mental health needs.