Darren Baker is the Psychological Therapies Lead for Psychosis in Haringey. On the 3^rd May a Co-production session was held with Darren’s team and a combination of Service Users, Carers and Peer support workers. The aim of the session was to discuss community transformation and how service users and carers should in involved in the planning and re-design of some Psychosis services. 4 service users and carers and 3 peer support workers came to the day.

There were several actions that came out of the meeting, all of which are shared below:

• The team will hold one away day each year jointly with service users and carers (who should make up at least 30% of attendees).
• A co-designed leaflet for Carers will be developed offering information and advice for those whose loved ones are going through a Mental Health crisis.
• We will run at least one psychoeducation group for people with psychosis each year to help people understand the nature of their difficulties and different ways of coping and connect people experiencing similar challenges.
• In all future groups, the team will consider how best to utilise the experiences of previous group attendees, for example, by inviting them to a one-off session of a new group or by supporting people to enable them to feel confident in co-facilitating groups jointly with psychosis pathway staff.
• Service user involvement will be systematically promoted by discussing the Experts by Experience register will all service users once psychological therapists finish a piece of work.
• The team will continue to work with our peer support colleagues to see how best we can support them and develop their roles within the Trust.

Darren said: 

“We loved the co-production session and found it incredibly valuable. It was the first time these service users and carers had done a session like this and so pre-session checks ins were important so that everyone knew what to expect and felt comfortable.

Having the peer support workers attend the session made all the difference, they were fantastic at facilitating conversation between the members of the group.

Some of the service users and carers are now on the Experts by Experience involvement register and so will be contributing to other projects. Some have even expressed interest in becoming peer workers.”

We’d like to say thank you to everyone who attended for their valuable contributions.