NLFC - Coproduction and development of Lived Experience roles

[Vocational training] The NLFC will be publishing the Co-production and User Involvement Strategy in September 2025, which reaffirms the Commissioning Hub’s commitment to working in partnership with people who use services, their families, and carers. This strategy ensures that they will be able to meaningfully contribute and influence the way services are shaped, delivered and quality assured.

To achieve this, the Commissioning Hub is keen to build on its existing co-production and user involvement model, which includes:

• Peer Engagement Workers (PEW): Six peers with lived experience recruited into paid positions to work alongside clinical quality managers in quality assurance roles, which includes one peer with a learning disability (Appendix JD)
• The NLFC Patient Council: A patient council comprised of 12 members, with representatives from all the inpatient providers, established to co-create and co-deliver system wide quality improvement and service development initiatives.
• Community Connectors: A group of community forensic service users, with representation from each of the SCFT’s, established to co commission provision delivered by VCFSE providers though the NLFC VCFSE Grants and Access to Employment programmes

The NLFC is committed to sustaining and strengthening its co-production and user involvement model. To support this, the Commissioning Hub will commission a third-sector provider with expertise in co-production and in developing people with lived experience in forensic mental health. The provider will maintain the existing model while expanding it through new roles for people with a learning disability and autistic people, and further enhance it through providing co-production leadership and the delivery of training to support meaningful involvement across all stages of commissioning and governance.