Benefits for people and the organisation

There are benefits to involvement for everyone involved and we must always remember this is a two-way process. For people with mental health problems, influencing and participating in projects or activities can help them to develop key skills, lead to increased levels of confidence and boost their self-esteem. Opportunities can often develop into leadership roles, jobs, teaching and training or peer mentoring. Organisations and services will see benefits in their understanding of the needs and challenges being faced by people using their services, they will be able to plan more effectively and subsequently deliver services that people want in partnership with those that use them.

There are many more benefits, we have listed some below.

Benefits for organisations

• Meaningfully engaging people in our work ensures it is informed by a broad range of experiences and will effectively meet diverse needs.
• Projects and services will be more effective at meeting the needs of a wide range of people.
• The organisation will become more representative of the diverse audiences that influence our work – this will be seen in the way they look, speak, and the methods they use.
• Their advice will be more insightful and more likely to benefit those who receive it.
• Their information will be more useful to the people who receive it and easier to understand.
• Their campaigning will be backed by better evidence and will ring true with more people.
• Their fundraising will demonstrate more clearly how donations transform more lives.
• The organisation will have more credibility with the general public, government and with funders.
• Their staff and volunteers will be more connected to the everyday issues of living with a mental health problem.
• Their staff and volunteers will become more familiar with issues of multiple disadvantage and will be more confident in addressing intersectional discrimination.

Benefits for people

• Validates the experiences people have had and values this in order to makes improvements
• Helps people to practice existing skills and develop new ones, such as public speaking, leading and contributing to meetings and editing/reviewing documents.
• Taking part helps people to be more effective in their everyday lives and to be more able to contribute and feel connected to their local communities and contribute to other national work.
• Sharing and talking about experience helps people to meet others with similar experience, to make more sense of their experiences and develop their views.
• Feel valued and respected and challenging self-discrimination.
• Our projects and services, information, advice and campaigning will more effectively meet their needs.
• The organisation are able to pay people who share their expertise to influence our plans or who contribute expertise to the work we deliver.
• Black, Asian, minority ethnic (BAME) communities, LGBTQ+ people, people with physical, sensory, cognitive impairments or learning disabilities, and other minorities feel better represented by Mind and more confident in engaging with us and seek Mind support when they need it.

Service users at Washington Mind told us that influence and participation had benefitted them in a number of important ways, including:

• making them feel valued
• giving them access to peer support
• helping them to feel part of a ‘community’
• empowering them to ‘see people, not problems’
• feeling they were not being judged
• feeling safe.

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