This project involves current mental health service receivers’ readers who have been trained by Derbyshire Voice and other professionals from the Trust to attend Derbyshire Voice Offices, on a regular, calendar monthly basis. The purpose of this group is to seek the views, opinions and thoughts about policies and procedures within the Mental Health Services on how services are delivered and developed alongside carrying out Equality Impact Risk Assessments (EIRA). This opportunity is open to a variety of service receivers who are willing and confident to air their concerns and opinions within a group session, or alternatively service receivers can also read the policies within their own time and within their own homes and send in their feedback to Derbyshire Voice offices, in which case the feedback will be discussed within the group setting

This opportunity is open to existing and new members who share a common goal of improving services for mental health service receivers. This can be a paid position or can be purely on a voluntary basis. All the necessary training and ongoing support will be provided. Criminal Records Bureau checks would be carried out on behalf of the volunteers / members by Derbyshire Voice at no cost to the volunteers, also having a check that did not come back as clear would not automatically eliminate the volunteers from partaking in this opportunity.

The aim of this project is to enable Derbyshire Voice to gather views, opinions and thoughts about Mental Health Services from current service receivers.

This information can then be fed back into the Mental Health Service so services can be altered to better meet the needs of service receivers.

This project would be held at The Hub Café on the Hartington Unit based at Chesterfield, and at Jackie's Pantry at the Radbourne Unit based at Derby Royal Hospital. It will be held on a regularly monthly cycle and Derbyshire Voice would reimburse volunteers attending these sessions, including payment for time, travel expenses, parking fees and refreshments.

Membership of Derbyshire Voice is free and open to anyone with an interest in mental health. To be a member you must live in Derbyshire and be a past or present receiver of mental health services or have experienced emotional pain.

We currently have a small number of volunteers within the organisation who help with administration, research and the magazine.

Derbyshire Voice is led by a small group of Trustees, many of whom have used Mental Health Services. If you would like to raise any issues with the Trustees, please feel free to contact us directly.

We currently have 20 Service Receiver Representatives covering Derby City and Derbyshire. If you would like one of our Representatives to raise any issue for you at strategic level, please contact us directly.