Eleanor Broadbent, Equality Diversity and Client Involvement Officer
Lyndsay Swales, Quality and Safety Lead
Our experts returned for their second session together this week. We felt enthusiastic and excited to continue with our work and many people were at ease because the initial fear of coming to a new place had disappeared.
Photo credit: Group work produced by group members
This week we were joined by 14 clients, including Mark and Robert who travelled from Gateshead in the North East on the train together with their support workers. We also welcomed John and Phil from Kirklees who are new to the group. We began by listening to last week’s podcast to refresh everybody’s memory of where we’re up to. Everybody welcomed our new experts and we were soon on with our first task – designing our logo!
We need a logo for the new St Anne’s Expert Voices and Experience Network (S.E.V.E.N for short!) to help build our profile within St Anne’s and to tell the rest of the world what we’re doing too.
We worked in small groups to come up with some creative ideas that represent our values. Being listened to, speaking out, showing respect and being involved. Some people drew the sun, stars, hands and lips to represent our voice.
Photo credit: Group work produced by group members
After sharing our logo ideas, we moved on to the second focus of the day; ‘What makes us who we are?: Telling our Stories’. Lyndsay began by sharing her story with the room. It was then the turn of our clients to share their own stories through pictures, drawings or sound recordings. We reflected on what makes us proud, what have we done in our life? What matters to us and who are we as people?
Some people took the brave decision to share their story with the room at the end of our session. Some of us have chosen to keep our reflections private. We are all equal and every story matter. We’ll be returning to this topic as we prepare to share some of our stories with other people in St Anne’s in the future – these will form the foundation of future client-led workshops and training sessions for our workforce.
Everybody did a fantastic job this week – we have a lot of gratitude for the energy that our clients are putting in to this forum and we can’t wait to see how everybody develops as we grow together and achieve our goals.
At the end of our session, Robert was interviewed by Eleanor for our weekly mini-podcast. You can listen here
This blog is part of a series from Eleanor and Lyndsay on Client Involvement. As we blog about our progress in supporting St Anne’s first ever Experts by Experience group, we’ll be reflecting on successes and challenges for inclusion, advocacy and the service user experience. We hope you’ll read along with us.