Across mental health systems, the language around lived experience has shifted. Co-production is now embedded in strategies, lived experience roles are more visible, and most systems can point to examples of engagement.
On the surface, this suggests progress. But there is a deeper question that remains unresolved. Despite the language, despite the structures, despite the intention, who actually holds power?
Because without power, involvement has limits. It can inform, it can influence at the edges, but it does not shape decisions in a meaningful or consistent way. Too often, lived experience is still brought into spaces that are already defined, asked to respond to decisions that are already underway, and positioned as something to be included rather than something that drives change.
This is not simply about practice. It is structural. The system, as it stands, is not designed to share power, and that shows up in how lived experience is positioned across commissioning, delivery, and governance.
At CAPITAL, we have seen how fragile lived experience influence can be when those structures shift. An 80 percent funding cut does more than reduce services. It reduces independence, weakens voice, and limits the ability to challenge decisions from an informed and collective position.
What is becoming clearer is that this is not just about individual organisations losing contracts. It is about a wider shift in how commissioning is reshaping the space that lived experience occupies.
As models move towards larger scale, lead provider arrangements, lived experience is increasingly absorbed into delivery structures rather than positioned alongside them. In that process, its independence is diluted. Its ability to challenge is constrained. And its role becomes more about delivery than influence.
Alongside this, something else is being lost.
For years, lived experience has not only relied on external organisations, but also on individuals within systems who have acted as stewards and champions. People within Integrated Care Boards and other system roles who have understood the value of lived experience, created space for it, and worked to ensure it had a voice at the right level.
Those roles are now diminishing. With the merger of Integrated Care Boards, ongoing restructuring, and increasing financial pressure, the presence of these champions is reducing. Dedicated roles are being removed or diluted. Influence is being centralised. The relational work that has enabled lived experience to be heard is becoming harder to sustain.
This matters because independence has never existed in isolation. It has depended on both strong user-led organisations and on people within systems who are prepared to protect space for challenge and difference. When both are weakened at the same time, the impact is significant.
Without independent organisations, there is less collective voice. Without internal champions, there are fewer routes into decision making. Together, this creates a system where lived experience is present, but less able to influence outcomes in a meaningful way. Without independence, and without those who protect it, there is no real accountability.
If we are serious about co-production, then the next step is not more involvement. It is accountability. That requires a shift in how lived experience is understood and where it sits within the system. It means moving beyond participation and towards structures that can both influence and challenge, visibly and credibly.
This is the thinking behind the Lived Experience Accountability Network. At this stage, the Network is an ambition. It is not yet funded. It is not yet operating at the scale we believe is needed. But the need for it is becoming more urgent.
The vision is to build an independent network where lived experience is not dependent on the system for its legitimacy, but is recognised as a credible force that can scrutinise, evaluate, and influence how services operate across mental health, health, housing, and social care.
The aim would be to bring together people with lived experience who are trained and supported to undertake independent scrutiny. It would create a consistent approach to evaluating services, grounded in real experience rather than organisational perspective. It would make findings public where appropriate, so that insight does not remain internal or diluted. And it would connect community level experience directly to system level decision making, without losing its integrity along the way. This is not simply a project idea. It is a response to a gap that is widening.
Systems are being asked to demonstrate genuine co-production, while at the same time reducing the space for independent lived experience organisations to exist and operate freely, and losing the internal roles that have helped sustain their influence. These two directions cannot sit comfortably together.
You cannot claim co-production while removing the conditions that allow lived experience to be independent, supported, and influential.
What is needed now is a more mature approach. One that recognises that lived experience is not just a source of insight, but a form of accountability. That it should not only contribute to conversations, but be able to challenge decisions, question priorities, and highlight where systems are not working as intended.
This will require change. Commissioning approaches that protect independence rather than dilute it. Investment in long term infrastructure rather than short term engagement activity. A willingness across systems to accept challenge as a necessary part of co-production, not a threat to it. And a recognition that steward roles inside systems are not optional, but essential to maintaining the conditions where lived experience can have influence.
The Lived Experience Accountability Network is our attempt to name what is missing and begin building towards it. But it cannot be built in isolation.
If this work is to move from ambition into reality, it needs people, organisations, funders, and systems willing to engage with it, shape it, and support it. That includes lived experience leaders who want to move beyond involvement and into influence. It includes organisations who are prepared to be scrutinised and changed by lived experience. It includes commissioners who understand that accountability is not an optional extra. And it includes funders who recognise that independent lived experience infrastructure needs investment before it can demonstrate impact at scale.
This is an open invitation. To those who have felt the limits of involvement and want to push further. To those who see the gap between language and reality and want to close it. And to those who understand that lived experience, when it is independent and collective, has the potential to reshape how systems operate.
If we are serious about co-production, then we need to be serious about power. And we need to be willing to build and protect the conditions that allow lived experience to hold it.
About CAPITAL
CAPITAL is a West Sussex-based mental health lived experience charity led by and for people with lived experience of mental health challenges. We work to reduce isolation, amplify lived experience voices, and create supportive peer-led spaces where people feel heard, valued, and connected. Through community projects, volunteering, advocacy, and creative opportunities, we aim to build a more compassionate and inclusive mental health system and community.
We are also actively seeking partnerships and collaborations that help keep lived experience at the heart of mental health support, services, and decision-making, get in touch with us to talk more.