CAPITAL is a small lived experience-led charity based in West Sussex. Emerging in the mid 1990s, it started from modest roots with the aim of building the capacity of local service users to better voice their views and contribute to the training of staff. It went on to provide inpatient peer support, to partner with social services developing drug and alcohol services and to enter into a co-production partnership with the local Trust. Throughout all of these initiatives, CAPITAL has preserved the support of its members as central to the ethos and sustainability of the charity. No one is turned away and there is no time limit to membership.
In 2025, I was invited to help CAPITAL tell its story: to talk to members, staff and volunteers about their experience of the organisation, what they value about it and their hopes for the future. I have known about CAPITAL since its early days, partly due to knowing people who were involved, but also due to its profile in relation to peer support. They always seemed to be there punching above their weight: taking part in national research studies, writing chapters for books and developing training packages. This was partly due to the horizons seen and held by those in leadership roles: Anne Beales (who later went on to lead service user involvement for Together for Mental Wellbeing) and Clare Ockwell – who stayed with CAPITAL for over fourteen years and took it to new national arenas. Now, Duncan Marshall has taken over the reins and is taking CAPITAL forward into new territory, refocusing the organisation on co-production and developing Lived Experience Recovery worker roles on the wards in Sussex amongst other things.
In listening to the many people I spoke to during the course of this project, I found it hard to imagine how to summarise these stories in words or to encapsulate them in a conventional report. I felt I was bearing witness to something profound about the power of lived experience, leadership, connection and peer support. Consequently, there are many ways in which this story – these stories – can be told, shared and appreciated.
At the root of it, I believe, is the safety and trust engendered by the warm welcome offered to new members, the inclusive approach to lived and living experience of mental distress and trauma, the deceptively simple acceptance of all – as one person put it ‘acknowledgement, acceptance, appreciation’. People tend to feel safe when they are not judged, when they are accepted as they are. Trust often takes time and emerges out of safety and consistency. One of the significant features of CAPITAL is that it is a constant presence in people’s lives: ‘I know you’re always going to be there’. There is no referral process and no time-limit, all of which contribute to the sense of safety and trust.
In CAPITAL, you can just say it, and you’re never judged, because everybody completely understands … I think a lot of that’s to do with, there seems to be a natural understanding of trauma … because everyone’s lived that really, and they know the horrors on a day-to-day basis.
It is no coincidence then that CAPITAL became a pioneer of peer support as an active ingredient in recovery. Peer support runs through all of CAPITAL’s work like a golden thread holding everything and everyone together. From the roots of the organisation in shared learning and training to the present day, peer support has been a constant. It was essential for the group emerging as an organisation and beginning to seek change. As Clare Ockwell, former CEO, wrote in an article in 2007:
Gradually we became far more aware of our need and ability to support each other. This mutual support remains crucial. (Clare Ockwell, 2007, p.30.)
In 2010, local consultations conducted by Sussex Partnership Foundation Trust (SPFT) and NHS West Sussex resulted in the decision to pilot inpatient peer support through a contract with CAPITAL. Three peer support workers took up their roles in Meadowfield Hospital in Worthing in February 2011. From the beginning, emphasis was placed on the training and support of the peer workers. An early report after six months of operation found that the service was being received very positively by inpatients, mentioning the importance of being listened to and the value of peers role-modelling recovery. An impact report from 2025 reported that 95% of inpatients found peer conversations to be helpful or very helpful, for example: ‘They actually listen and let you finish’.
I think we’re a lifeline. I think quite often there’s a strong possibility that person won’t return [to hospital] because of the work that we’ve done. I think that our role actually speeds up their recovery. [CAPITAL peer support worker]
CAPITAL’s focus on peer support has been recognised nationally, as demonstrated by their involvement in research at St George’s, University of London and in a number of publications (Ockwell and Pearce, 2019; Faulkner and Basset, 2012; CAPITAL, 2010).
In 2017 CAPITAL was a partner in the “Principled Ways of Working” working group aiming to carry forward the learning from a conference hosted by Sussex Partnership Foundation NHS Trust (Faulkner, 2021). In 2018 the Principled Ways of Working Peer Support Charter was produced. This has been used widely both locally and nationally (see this short film: Principled Ways of Working: Peer Support Learning From a Local Partnership).
The contract to provide peer support on inpatient wards continued until late 2025 when it finally came to an end. Some of the peer support workers have continued to volunteer in similar roles and with CAPITAL. And now there are plans to develop new and different roles for people with lived experience on inpatient wards.
I hope CAPITAL is not unique. I would like to think that there is a network of similar organisations still sustaining themselves and working to amplify the voices of people with lived experience to both support each other and, crucially, to change and improve local services. However, I am not sure that is the case. With all of the changes that have taken place in recent years and the impact of austerity, we know that all local charities have taken a hit. There is no longer the same flexibility of offer; organisations increasingly operate with project-focused funding and criteria-bound, time-limited services.