Our leadership, staff and volunteers have experience of using wider services. We aim to use this lived experience to influence positively how services can be more effective for the people that are using them. We work alongside our partners to influence the design and delivery of services in a variety of different ways.
We enable our peer’s mentors, staff and those we are supporting to talk about their experiences in a variety of settings to improve the understanding of others and the delivery and design of future services.
This has been in a range of settings, including commissioners, academia, sentencers, employment providers, media, Probation and housing. Our main aim in co-production is to enable peers to feel protected and empowered by their experience of influencing systems change.
We have trained and equipped our volunteers as community reporters to capture their stories and the stories of others. Their first film is presented here:
We actively employ people with limited work history, but relevant experience and enable them to be brilliant in supporting others and using experience for good. Our staff are working within Probation offices, visiting prisons and speaking at Courts, employment events and multi-agency forums. The value of their experience shines through in their work.
CLI set up and participate in multi-agency forums in all our work. Encouraging and supporting our volunteers and staff to be involved to describe their unique perspective on how these services should be delivered.
Credit: Bedfordshire Community Reporters
“Drug and alcohol recovery can be serious stuff, so to hear ongoing laughter coming from your group was wonderful and really made me smile. Whatever you are doing it is wonderful – keep it up”
– Zara, P2R Service Manager, Bedford
Please contact us if you would like to work with us, either as a volunteer or a like minded
organisation.
