Lived Experience Ambassador

Job overview

The North East and North Cumbria Provider Collaboratives are recruiting four Lived Experience Ambassadors to help shape specialised services for:

• Adult low and medium secure services

• Children and young people mental health services
• Adult Eating disorder services
• Perinatal mental health services In your supporting information section of your application, please state which of the above provider collaborations you would be interested in working with.

We are looking for people who can bring valuable insight through their direct experience of the above-mentioned mental health services, this may be as someone who has used inpatient or community mental health services or, as a carer (for example a family member, friend or partner).

Lived Experience Ambassadors will use their experience to help others understand the impact of accessing mental health services, including the challenges and barriers people can face.

Each Lived Experience Ambassador will have core hours linked to a primary service.  There will also be opportunities to work across Provider Collaboratives, using a hybrid approach with the option to undertake additional hours where available (maximum of 100 additional days’ work per year across the four posts)

Main duties of the job

Provider Collaboratives were introduced as part of the NHS Long Term Plan to strengthen partnership working and improve specialist care.  Their aim is to ensure people who use services receive high quality care, as close to home as possible and are supported to stay connected with their communities.

The main responsibilities for postholders will be to attend and contribute to meetings within the Provider Collaborative governance structure, work alongside Lived Experience Advisory Groups (LEAG’s) and participate in the newly established Lived Experience Review Group, which will report into the Partnership Board, outcomes from the Partnership board will be taken back to these groups creating a structured and meaningful feedback loop, that embeds lived experience at the heart of commissioning decisions. The role will also be involved in coproducing documentation, policies, and communication to reflect the needs of services users and carers.

We ask postholders to represent the views of the wider community, recognising the importance of mental health, learning disability and autism services being shaped by the voices of people who use them.  This will involve working in a constructive, thoughtful and solution focused way.

The role requires a combination of home and face to face working, with travel across the North East and North Cumbria.

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

The roles are 18-month fixed term, postholders will report to the Lived Experience Lead for Commissioning and be accountable to the Chair of the Provider Collaborative Partnership Board.  These posts are intended to help establish and develop a new approach to lived experience involvement with the Provider Collaboratives.  Learning from the roles, alongside ongoing evaluation, will inform future decisions about how this work is sustained and developed beyond this initial phase.

Please find attached job descriptor for full details.

Advertising date : 24th February 2026

Closing date : 10th March 2026

We welcome your application.