Become an Expert by Experience Leader
An ‘EbEL’ stands for Expert by Experience Leader. They represent the voice of lived experience in Open Mental Health.
EbELs are working as equal partners in Open Mental Health to transform the way the whole system works, and hopefully leading to better outcomes for people. This is a trailblazing model of working which means that the voice of lived experience is central to decision making. This is exciting and dynamic, and gives EbELs great experience and transferrable skills as well as steering system wide decisions.
EbELs are supported by a co-production team and meet each other on a regular basis to bring their insights and thoughts together.
What is the role of an Open Mental Health EbEL?
Experts by Experience represent lived experience in considerations and decisions about how support in the community can be best offered to meet people’s needs. The goal is to join up social and clinical/medical support, and improve the experience and quality of treatment and support for service users, carers and families.
Why is coproduction so important?
The best decisions are those where different perspectives have come together. The real-life, lived experience perspective of mental illness is key alongside the collective ‘professional’ perspective. Benefits include:
- effective service transformation and better individual outcomes
- wellbeing for experts by experience and experts by training
- collaborative and partnership working culture
- community capacity building and connection
How to become an Open Mental Health EbEL?
We are looking to find people interested in representing those with lived experience of mental illness to join Open Mental Health in Somerset. You would help to coproduce a range of community mental health services, look at reviewing and designing new models of care as well as feed into higher level decisions and the development of resources. EbELs are remunerated for their involvement.
Do you have experience in:
- Using mental health services now or previously in Somerset?
- Being a carer of someone with a mental illness?
- Being severely affected by mental illness or complex needs?
- Contributing to other forums or groups that help facilitate change?
We are particularly interested in representation from people who live in Sedgemoor or are aged 18-25 and encourage those from diverse backgrounds to join our team to be part of this.
Get Involved
If you’d like join or hear more about the Recovery Partners, there are locality groups that meet as well as fortnightly Countywide MS Teams meeting. Very often becoming a Recovery Partner can lead to informal peer support as people become acquainted with one another. To find out more please contact Paul Milverton on 07979 701247
If yourself, somebody you know or somebody you work with wants to go that extra step and make the most of their lived experience to help shape the future of services in Somerset, contact helen.fielden@rethink.org to find out more and start that conversation.