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Sarah shares her lived experience of mental health and his journey to becoming a Peer Support Coordinator.  

I have experienced anxiety for as long as I can remember and have had multiple periods of severe depression over the last twenty-five years or so spending much of that time on anti-depressants to help manage the worse phases of illness.

Peer support workers support service users and their families by using their lived experience of mental health issues. They work in a recovery-focused way, emphasising connectedness, hope, identity, and empowerment. Peer workers share their lived experience to inspire hope that recovery is possible. Tiru, shares his lived experience of mental health and his journey to becoming a Peer Support Coordinator.  

South London Listens’ Be Well hubs initiative is about getting people connected to each other and to the right services. This means strengthening both the relationships in existing community institutions themselves – whether it is in a school, place of worship, or simply somewhere people gather – as well as the relationship between these places and their local statutory health services and local government.  

Jemma is a Service User Research Ambassador at South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust, which involves promoting the importance of research to the Trust’s service users. She took up the role after taking part in two research studies into psychosis at the Trust. Here she talks about what it was like to be part of research.

The South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust became a Kickstart employer in December 2021 supporting 12 young people to kickstart their careers. Open to young people aged 16-24 on Universal Credit the scheme aims to get people back into work or jump start careers for those without work experience.

The Trust offered a variety of roles as part of the scheme, from Digital Services Support Assistant to Educational Development Assistant and Assistant Nurse Education.  We are catching up with the Kickstarters and their mentors to find how they have found the experience so far.