Mental Health People's Parliament

The People’s Parliament is a strategic body led by MPs with recent lived experience of mental health difficulties. Its function is to hold decision makers to account for improvements in services and supports so that people who experience mental health difficulties can have an improved quality of life and be in greater control of their own mental wellbeing. The Parliament is located in the Metropolitan Borough of Sandwell, just outside of Birmingham.

Parliament White Paper Priorities

Read the latest newsletter

Developmental Work

Monitoring Work

The Parliament is also developing several areas of work in its own right, with partners. These are:

Quality of Life Mental Health Standards

These standards are a tool that can be used in a variety of ways to drive change. They are being embedded into commissioning processes to inspire and stimulate recovery focused approaches, challenge assumptions, shape thinking and stimulate cultural change in working practices.

Read the standards

Community Places of Safety

One of the Parliament’s current priorities is the development of a Community Place of Safety. You can read about this below:

Read the briefing paper

The Parliament hold regular monitoring meetings, asking key decision makers, commissioners and other senior figures for progress made against Parliament priorities. The last meeting was held on 17^th November 2017.

You can read the agencies responses by clicking on the image below:

During 2018 the People’s Parliament will prioritise the monitoring of 24/7 access to mental healthcare and increasing access to psychological therapies (IAPT). Other areas will also continue to be monitored, but will not be prioritised.

The role of an MP in the People’s Parliament

The Mental Health People's Parliament is made up of MPs with recent lived experience of mental health difficulties within the last two years. MPs need to have recent experience, so they have knowledge about how current services operate and how they can be improved.

If you are a Sandwell resident and have recent lived experience of mental health difficulties click below to learn more about being an MP. Alternatively contact us on [email protected] or 0300 302 0770.

R ead about how to become an MP

Latest

Katy Evans, Quality of Life Facilitator

Katy brings her own lived experience to the role of Quality of Life Facilitator, which she was recruited to in the summer of 2017. She has experience of working both locally and nationally on issues around disability.
Mental Health Newsletter August 2017

Mental Health Newsletter August 2017
Time Machine 2018 - Part 1

Would you like to journey back in time to a hundred or more years ago and see what life was like for people with learning disabilities? Would you like to look forward to the future and check out how people with learning disabilities have fulfilled lives, careers, get married and bring up their own children?
Time Machine 2018 - Part 2

This follow on event, Time Machine Part 2, brings people with learning disabilities and families together with local professionals and others, to plan a future where aspirations are high and ordinary things like employment and having my own home are part of people’s everyday lives.

Who we are

Changing Our Lives is a rights-based organisation. We work alongside disabled people and people experiencing mental health difficulties, of all ages, as equal partners to find solutions to social injustice and health inequalities.
Beth's New Life

In the summer 2017, at the age of 19 Beth left school with no robust plans in place and her mum Sue was very concerned about what the future held for her daughter.
Postural Care

We all need to look after our posture. For some of us it's as simple as sitting up correctly at our computer. But for those of us who struggle to move our own bodies, for example if we have a complex disability, looking after our posture is even more important. If we don’t look after our posture, this can lead to debilitating health complications.
Mental Health People's Parliament

The People’s Parliament is a strategic body led by MPs with recent lived experience of mental health difficulties. Its function is to hold decision makers to account for improvements in services and supports so that people who experience mental health difficulties can have an improved quality of life and be in greater control of their own mental wellbeing. The Parliament is located in the Metropolitan Borough of Sandwell, just outside of Birmingham.
2018 / 19 schedule
What makes us unique
Safe Places

The Safe Places scheme is based on the belief that everyone has the right to feel confident and safe going out in their local community. Lots of people feel unsafe at times in the local area; this might be because they have experienced crime or because they simply feel unsafe. For disabled people, older people and others who feel vulnerable this often means they don’t go out at all. The Safe Places scheme enables people to feel more confident, access their local areas more and know what to do.
No matter what disability or mental health difficulty, we all have a right to an ‘ordinary life’.
Where we work
Best practice