Influence and Participation with Buckinghamshire Mind

We want to hear your voice to help shape the future of Buckinghamshire Mind.  Your lived experience is vital for Buckinghamshire Mind to thrive and continue to support its service users.  It doesn’t matter how much you engage – we want to hear from each one of you and will support you to contribute to shaping our common future.

Despite all of us being affected by the pandemic, Buckinghamshire Mind has grown over the last few years.  As an organisation, we have had to rise to many challenges and we are determined to build on all we have learnt during this time.

Our Strategy for 2021-2024 has three golden threads: be inclusive, be informed and be agile. Although we are proud of how we have adapted, the flow of rich and informative feedback about our services from the people who know them the best – you – was disrupted during the pandemic.

We want to reinvigorate that flow and we want to embed your voices in to the heart of the work we do.  We also want to expand the ways that we work with people so that, as well as giving feedback, you have the opportunity to participate in service design and service delivery.

How would it work? What would it be like? 

Each participation opportunity will have a role description that will detail what the project is about, who the project leads are, anticipated project length and time commitment, details of renumeration (where applicable) and what you and Buckinghamshire Mind will gain from the project.

Before undertaking the role there will be a discussion with the project leads about the project and how we ensure we support you in any way you need. This could include additional training, technical support, provision for safe spaces, travel expenses, reminder calls/texts – anything that we can reasonably do to help you fully engage with the project. We will also ensure that your work on the project is recorded and that this is shared with you for future reference.

How can you get involved now?

We have some ideas that we will detail below but the two initial projects that you can be involved in are as follows:

Creating the Foundation – Influence & Participation Policy

With support from Project Leads (Andy Godley and Salome Williams) the post holders will be responsible for the creation of a draft Influence and Participation Policy, to be presented for approval by the Board of Trustees of Buckinghamshire Mind. This will involve two 3-hour discussion sessions plus 2 hours reading between meetings, which will take place in February and March 2023. To find out more about this opportunity and receive a copy of the role description or discuss whether it’s right for you and any support you would need to participate, please email [email protected].

Registering your interest for future projects

Looking forward, we will be exploring how we can increase opportunities for your participation in all areas of our work across the organisation including projects like:

• Recruitment – helping with role descriptions, interviewing and decision-making (we would provide support and training in this area).
• Volunteering – this is a major piece of work to build on our success at gaining the Queen’s Award for Voluntary Service. Looking at what works well and how we can improve and expand the volunteering experience across the whole charity.
• Ongoing development and design of our services – We really hope that something here will intrigue you and you will contact to know more.  Whether it’s one of the ideas or projects above or more of a general interest in getting involved we want to hear from you – let us know your contact details and what you are interested in (HR, Fundraising & Communications, Wellbeing or anything else).  We will use this to help plan future projects and opportunities to ensure that they are engaging and interesting – the more people we hear from the better that process will be.

To register your interest or find out more, please use the form below or email: [email protected]

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