Why involve?
“Using my experience of being a service user, I feel I am helping improve services of tomorrow.”
“My confidence has grown enormously through my work for the Register. I never knew work could be so much fun.”
“I feel very empowered being with the Involvement Register. It gives me an opportunity to work and learn at the same time.”
“I get to meet service users like myself, meet different members of staff and go to different places in the trust.”
“The work is varied, it can range from attending meetings to running focus groups and to crown it all I get paid for just having fun.”
“Some of the reasons why I love to work for service user involvement are comradeship, financial and the love to give back to the community”.
“I’m learning so much from the tasks I’ve been involved in, including recognising some of my strengths and weaknesses.”
“The Involvement Register is a safe place to test myself in relation to work.”
“Being on the Involvement Register means I can help to bring about a positive authentic change in the mental health service!”
“Being in the register puts me in touch with others that are striving to improve our lives, especially now facing the cuts.”
“The involvement register is powerful weapon for positive change, engaged in the front lines of extending opportunities, improving services, and transforming lives.”
“Without Service User input and opinion we will slide back into the old days of Psychiatry when patients were dictated at. Often inaccurately.”
“Because you’re needed, and because you’re worth it.”
“We need to involve the people that use our services, as partners in the process, and recognise and value their knowledge and skills.”
“Because nothing about us, without us, if for us.”
““No decision about me without me.” National CAMHS Support Service
“Because sometimes it takes one to understand one.”
“‘Equality’ & ‘democracy’ there are two good reasons.”
“Involvement generates a sense of belonging and ownership.”
“Providing involvement opportunities allows people to grow, but also to own the service they use and help improve it.”
“Because service users are often patronised, told what’s best for us. In fact we’re the experts on our own conditions.”
South London Involvement Forum 
Sometimes when you talk about your problems or share it with somebody honest or write them down on a piece of paper and tear it, they disappear.
I have always listed my problems on paper and sorted them one by one so that I can have a free organised mind without confusion a step towards recovery.
Hi Pen!
Nice recovery message!! Glad to be back doing some work with you and Stathi on then Peer Project!!
Recovery message
Simple, easy to do, something we all can do.
Doctors can treat but we recover, together.
Connection is the name of the game.
The first step is to reach out and speak to someone in a universal language.
The telephone is our trusted friend. But it needs charging, needs credit, needs maintaining.
How about face-to-face? Can we share our experience? Will someone else understand?
The walls of silence begin to crumble. The electricity flickers and crackles into life. We walk to the door, slowly. Feet pad on the carpet, well-trodden.
Have we been this way before? Have we taken this path? Here are images of pathways, journeys, green fields and trees springing into life.
Not a happy coincidence. The world is changing as we watch. But we never saw it move.
Where is the moment? What was the tipping point at which everything changed? What was the trigger and what is the moment now when all becomes clear?
We’re at peace now.
Healing has happened.
Well said Penelope – here’s to the future of involvement! It makes sense. A thousand ripples will create a wave 🙂
Hi D and everyone,
Great news, we look as if we are finally up and running with volunteers becoming available to carry out vital work supporting people leaving crisis services in Southwark.
Let’s hope this is the Crest of a big wave of involvement by people who have lived experience of the mental health system to create new ways of working to change mental health services.. well, ok, a small ripple!
Small ripples become big waves at times. Let’s hope this will be one of them.