At NSUN, a key strand of our work falls under the banner of policy and campaigning.
While we are proud of this work, we have been reflecting on the power that we hold in getting to decide which issues we take on and who we choose to support. We also acknowledge that historically, people have felt unclear about what policy and campaigning work is, how to ask for our support, and exactly what it is we can offer.
The aim of this article is to explain the above, with the goal of helping our members to better understand the work that we do, and to know how you can approach us for grassroots policy and campaigning support.
What is policy and campaigning?
Policy and campaigning refers to a broad set of activities, often focussed on changing “the system”. For us, this can include exposing problems within current mental health provision, campaigning for change, and supporting solutions. This work stands alongside our other activities which are more focussed on building alternatives “outside” of “the system”; including our funding programmes, supporting member organisations, and commissioning/publishing writing about new forms of care and approaches to mental ill-health, distress, and trauma.
Policy and campaigning can involve lots of things, from creating an open letter, lobbying parliament and speaking at events, to engaging with the media, creating coalitions with other organisations, and conducting/publishing research on the harms of current systems. Often, our work on a particular issue will involve a mixture of these things, some in public and others behind the scenes.
What we decide to do on a particular issue is based on our capacity and expertise, and strategic decision making around what we think might best achieve our goals. If we are supporting a member with their campaign, we are also guided by their expertise and how they feel we might be best placed to support.
The tensions of doing policy and campaigning work
Over the past few years we have been having lots of conversations about what it means to do policy and campaigning work, and the tensions involved in doing it. In particular, doing work directed at changing “the system” can be complex, for many reasons. This is something we have written about in the past.
At NSUN, we recognise that dominant systems of power and mental healthcare often cause harm, and for the most part require dismantling and reimagining entirely. It can be conflicting to advocate for “change” in systems that we do not believe should exist in the first place. This work can also be hostile, demanding, and involve a lot of work for little reward, change, or progress, and our participation can be read as us inadvertently validating harmful work.
Nonetheless, we still see value in dedicating a portion of our work to trying to change the current system: because it is the one we are currently living in, because we can make a tangible difference, and because it matters to many of our membership. There is an inherent tension here, between recognising the limits of this work while still believing it is worth doing. We have no solutions, but a commitment to continuing to ask questions, be honest about our work, and be willing to learn.
The power we do and do not hold
A large part of our conversations around policy and campaigning work has involved thinking about the power we hold. While this is often implicit in our publications, it feels important to acknowledge them explicitly.
Firstly, while we have always rejected the idea that we “represent” the service user “voice”, others (particularly those in “power” such as funders, NHS foundations, and policy makers) often interpret our work as doing exactly that. As a medium-sized organisation, we are often invited to be involved in initiatives in a representative role. We can see how our participation can be and has been tokenised and used for tick-box initiatives that are not interested in the same things as us. At the same time, while we do not seek to “represent” our members, we also feel that we have a responsibility to use these opportunities that smaller organisations or individual members do not get. We are aware that our refusal to engage in something may mean that there are no lived experience voices “at the table”. Again, this is a tension that we have not and likely cannot resolve, instead we must continue to ask the questions that matter to us: is it ethical? Can we make a difference? Does it align with our priorities?
Secondly, we also acknowledge the power we hold in having generated expertise and insider knowledge on particular institutional processes. We understand the politics of how certain organisations work together, what campaigning tactics are likely to “work” in particular instances, and have built a network of contacts across “the system”. We feel a responsibility to share this knowledge, while also recognising the limits to our understanding.
While it is true that we’ve built organisational knowledge and expertise, it is also important to acknowledge the limits we operate within. We do not have legal, research, public relations, or advocacy teams. We are not experts on the law, nor do we have the capacity or resource to have built strategic relationships with policy makers and/or politicians in the way that many large mental health charities can or have done. While we are the only national user-led mental health charity, many policy makers are not aware of us, or choose to only approach much larger and better-resourced mental health charities in major consultation work. As a team with lived experience, we have also experienced harm in mainstream policy and/or “co-production” spaces, where our critical perspectives are met with hostility and our recommendations ignored.
We do, however, have the privilege of infrastructure that many brilliant campaigners do not, such as funding, permanent staff, insurance, a bank account, as well as the legal protections that come with being a registered organisation and having trustees. It is important to recognise this power and where possible, use it to support others that do not have this infrastructure in place. We already regularly “lend” our infrastructure to grassroots groups (e.g. through our hosted projects, publishing, supporting campaigns by platforming them, advising on strategy and communications, and by offering financial support where we can) but we are keen to do more.
Finally, we also hold the power to decide what issues we take on and how we decide to go about it. Sometimes we generate campaigns internally from discussions in the team, and other times members approach us and ask for our support. When we decide to take on issues we must think about the work in question is within our capacity, expertise, and policy priorities. We also think about who else is working on this issue and whether we feel we could make a meaningful contribution.
Because many of these conversations involve sensitive and complex negotiations, it is often appropriate for us to conduct them behind closed doors. However, this can make it difficult for people to understand why we decide to take on certain issues over others, to know that we can and do offer campaigning support, and make it difficult for others to hold us to account. We commit to making this work as transparent as possible, while still being unclear exactly how best we might go about this.
How you can request our support
Visit our Policy & Campaigning webpage and scroll down to “What we can help with” to find out more about the support we can offer for grassroots, user-led policy and campaigns work.