Regional Expert by Experience

Elysium Healthcare Limited; Borehamwood; Hybrid; GBP 55,000 - 75,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

33 days annual leave incl. birthday

Career development

Rewards & Ely-Vate platform

Wellbeing support

Job summary

Elysium Healthcare Limited is seeking a Regional Expert by Experience to provide lived-experience leadership across our hospitals and care homes. You will champion co-production and trauma-informed approaches, ensuring service users and carers influence strategy, quality, and culture.

You will engage with operational leaders, families, peers and external partners to surface insights, shape services, and drive improvement across the North West, Yorkshire and East Midlands regions.

Qualifications

• Lived experience expertise guiding culture and priorities.
• Ability to translate experience insights into actionable recommendations.
• Knowledge of governance and regulatory frameworks in mental health services.

Responsibilities

• Provide senior lived-experience leadership within Regional SMT.
• Highlight risks and themes from lived experience feedback in strategy discussions.
• Represent diverse service user groups to inform culture and practice.
• Lead regional co-production frameworks across sites.
• Develop and strengthen involvement structures for service users and carers.
• Support governance forums with lived-experience input and insights.

Skills

Lived experience leadership

Co-production

Trauma-informed practice

Governance & quality

Stakeholder engagement

Peer workforce support

Regulatory readiness

Data-driven insight

Tools

MS Office

Job description

Are you passionate about using your lived experience to influence positive change and improve the quality of care for others? Join Elysium Healthcare as a Regional Expert by Experience to provide lived-experience leadership across our hospitals and care homes, ensuring the voices of service users, families, and carers help shape how we deliver and improve our services.

As a key member of the Regional Senior Management Team, you will bring an independent perspective, offering constructive challenge and valuable insight to help ensure co-production remains at the heart of decision-making. You will work closely with operational leaders, service users, carers, and colleagues to ensure lived-experience feedback directly influences service development, quality improvement, and organisational culture.

In this role, you will lead engagement activities across the region, building strong relationships with service users, families, carers, peer workers, and external partners. You'll champion inclusive, trauma-informed, and recovery-focused approaches, ensuring people feel heard, valued, and empowered to contribute to meaningful change.

You will support and strengthen regional involvement structures, helping services develop opportunities for co-production and participation while promoting the value of lived experience throughout the organisation. Through regular engagement and feedback, you will identify themes, risks, and improvement opportunities, providing independent assurance and insight to senior leaders and governance forums.

Working closely with local services and the national Expert by Experience network, you will help ensure learning, feedback, and best practice are shared across the organisation. You will play an important role in shaping service improvement initiatives, challenging where necessary, and helping to create environments where service users and carers are genuine partners in care and decision-making.

This is a hybrid role covering our services North West, Yorkshire and East Midlands.

Key Accountabilities:

Lived-Experience Leadership & Strategic Influence

• Provide senior lived-experience leadership within the Regional SMT, shaping priorities, decisions and improvement plans through direct insight from service users and carers.
• Use expert independent challenge to highlight lived-experience risks, themes and blind spots in strategic and operational discussions.
• Represent the views and experiences of diverse service user groups to inform culture, practice and service development.
• Lead regional co-production frameworks and ensure consistent, meaningful involvement across all sites.
• Strengthen service user and carer involvement structures, forums and working groups.
• Promote inclusive and trauma-informed practice in all aspects of service design, delivery and evaluation.
• Build relationships with community groups, advocates, peer networks and carers to surface real-world experience and feedback.
• Ensure lived-experience contributors receive appropriate support, recognition and development.

Regional Involvement Structures & Peer Workforce Support

• Lead the support to Peer Support Workers across the region, working alongside line managers to strengthen consistency and best practice.
• Support the development of peer-led practice, recovery-based approaches and service user-led initiatives.

Experience Assurance & Insight Reporting

• Conduct observational assurance visits focused on experience, relationships, culture and trauma-informed practice.
• Synthesise feedback from service users, carers, surveys, community engagements and involvement forums to identify common themes and insights.
• Produce accessible insight reports that inform governance, quality priorities and improvement work.

Leadership Role in Governance & Quality Improvement

• Lead on lived-experience perspectives into governance forums, steering groups and quality discussions.
• Influence site-level Quality & Assurance Plans by providing service user and carer insight, rather than leading technical production.
• Participate & direct preparations for external regulatory activity (e.g., HIW/CQC) by incorporating lived-experience viewpoints on culture, environment and communication.
• Support Quality Improvement (QI) projects where lived experience is essential, ensuring co-production and meaningful involvement.
• Development of organisational policies in collaboration with the corporate EBE.

Collaboration & National Alignment

• Act as the regional conduit to the corporate EbE function, feeding local insights into national strategy.
• Ensure alignment of regional co-production practice with national EbE standards, policies and programmes.
• Share learning across regions and contribute to national thematic reviews, involvement priorities and organisational improvement work.

To be successful in this ole you will need:

Knowledge and Skills

• Lived experience expertise, with the ability to draw on personal experience of mental health or Learning Disability and Autism (LD/A) services to influence culture, leadership and strategic priorities.
• Strong understanding of co-production, trauma-informed and recovery-oriented approaches, and their role in shaping involvement, service design and organisational culture.
• Knowledge of engagement and involvement models that support service users, carers, peer workers and lived experience contributors at regional and organisational levels.
• Understanding of governance and regulatory frameworks within mental health and LD/A services, with the confidence to contribute lived experience perspectives to governance, quality and improvement discussions.
• Ability to translate lived experience insights into clear, evidence-based recommendations that influence strategic and operational decision-making.
• Strong qualitative analysis and synthesis skills, with the ability to identify themes from feedback and experience data and present findings through accessible reports and presentations.
• Excellent communication, facilitation and relationship-building skills, with the ability to engage diverse service user and carer communities and lead inclusive conversations.
• Ability to provide constructive challenge, identify risks and influence service improvement across multiple sites.
• Confidence in supporting the peer workforce through coaching, mentoring and informal supervision of Peer Support Workers.
• Strong organisational and prioritisation skills, with the ability to coordinate multiple involvement and improvement initiatives across a region.
• Proficiency in digital tools, including Microsoft Office applications, collaboration platforms, survey software and reporting dashboards.
• Self-motivated, reflective and resilient, with the ability to work both independently and collaboratively while driving continuous improvement informed by lived experience.

Experience

• Lived experience of using mental health services and the ability to apply this constructively within a leadership role.
• Experience of co-production, service user involvement, peer support or lived experience leadership at service, regional or organisational level.
• Experience of engaging with and building relationships across diverse service user and carer communities.
• Experience of providing challenge, insight and influence within formal or informal quality, governance or improvement forums.
• Experience of working collaboratively with site teams to support service improvement within hospital and/or care home environments.
• Experience of developing, supporting or mentoring Peer Support Workers and other lived experience contributors.
• Experience of gathering, analysing and synthesising feedback and lived experience insights into clear, accessible reports and recommendations.
• Experience of promoting and embedding trauma-informed and recovery-focused approaches.
• Experience of contributing to, supporting or informing regulatory inspections and preparation activities.
• Familiarity with quality improvement methodologies and approaches.

What You’ll Get

At Elysium Healthcare, we believe in taking care of the people who care for others, you’ll enjoy a comprehensive benefits package designed to support your wellbeing, growth, and future:

• The equivalent of 33 days annual leave (including bank holidays) – plus your birthday off and the option to buy additional annual leave, in our annual selection window.
• Career development and training to help you achieve your professional goals
• Access to our Rewards & Benefits platform Ely-Vate; Your one-stop destination for everyday savings, exclusive benefits, and wellbeing hub!
• Wellbeing support and activities to help you maintain a healthy work-life balance
• Access to Blue Light Card, which provides a range of exclusive offers and discounts
• Life Assurance, for added peace of mind
• Stream – instant access to earned wages when you need it, plus access to save, directly from your wages, alongside financial wellbeing support.
• 24/7 GP service and second medical opinion, to ensure you are the best you can be
• Enhanced Maternity Package, so you can truly enjoy this special time
• Pension contribution, to help secure your future

About us:

Elysium Health care has over 8,000 employees and a unique approach to the delivery of care. With a network of over 80 services across England and Wales covering Mental Health, Neurological, Learning Disabilities & Autism, Children & Education, there is opportunity for you to grow and move.

Elysium Healthcare is part of Ramsay Health Care with a global network that extends across 10 countries and employs over 86,000 people globally.

Elysium Healthcare follows safer recruitment of staff for all appointments and is a Disability Confident employer, committed to inclusive and accessible recruitment. It is a requirement that all staff understand it is each person’s individual responsibility to promote and safeguard the welfare of service users. All candidates will be subject to a DBS disclosure