When I am asked what a Senior Lived Experience Practitioner does, I often pause. Not because I don’t know, but because the role is layered. It cannot be captured fully in a job description. At its heart, my role is about presence.
There is a significant difference between being invited into a focus group and sitting at the strategic table. Focus groups matter deeply. They have shifted the culture of mental health services over the past decade, creating space for people to speak about their experiences of care – sometimes for the first time. Being listened to in that way can be powerful and healing.
But strategic involvement feels different. When I sit in rooms with clinical leaders, directors, and operational managers, I am not there to share a single story and leave. I am there as a colleague. As a leader. As someone whose experience is not a case study but a lens through which systems are viewed and shaped.
I carry my professional skills and knowledge, but I also carry the memory of what it felt like to be on the other side of the table. I remember the vulnerability. The fear. The moments of feeling unheard. There is a quiet voice within me that still holds that experience, and it informs how I listen, how I challenge, and how I advocate.
Being embedded at a strategic level means I can influence conversations as they unfold. I can gently interrupt language that depersonalises. I can ask, “What will this feel like for the person receiving this service?” I can help colleagues connect policy decisions to lived realities.
Over time, this presence shifts something. It humanises discussions that might otherwise become purely operational. It reminds the system that we are talking about people’s lives, not just pathways and performance indicators.
Representing recovery and possibility
There is also something else that happens simply by being in the room. I represent recovery.
Not in a simplistic or polished way, but in a real way. I represent the possibility of living well alongside severe mental illness. For frontline staff, this can bring hope – a reminder that the work they do matters, that recovery is not abstract.
For senior leaders, my presence can be more confronting. I am a visible reminder that the decisions made in boardrooms ripple outward into real lives. Budgets, staffing models, eligibility criteria – these are not neutral. They shape people’s experiences of care and, sometimes, their sense of worth.
In a system historically grounded in the medical model, I also represent a broader understanding of mental health. I do not reject the medical model; it has its place. But I embody the recovery model – the belief that people are more than their diagnosis, that autonomy matters, and that recovery is defined by the individual, not the service.
At times, this means challenging long-held assumptions. It means asking whether we are supporting people to build meaningful lives, or simply managing risk and symptoms. It means shifting from “doing to” towards “working alongside.”
That can feel uncomfortable – for others and for me. There are moments when I am aware of the emotional labour involved in holding both my past experience and my current professional identity. Moments where I feel the weight of representing something larger than myself.
But there is also privilege in this role. I have the opportunity to bridge worlds – to translate lived experience into strategic influence, and to bring strategic thinking back to the realities of people’s lives. I am not just recounting what happened to me; I am helping to shape what happens next.
And that, to me, is the true difference of being involved at a strategic level. It is not consultation. It is not tokenism. It is leadership rooted in experience – leadership that challenges, connects, and quietly reshapes the system from within.
Alee Buckley is a Senior Lived Experience Practitioner at Gleadless and Heeley Neighbourhood Mental Health Centre, Sheffield Health Partnership University NHS Foundation Trust.
