Response
Littlemore, Oxfordshire
Response
Our mission at Response is to enable people of all ages to live a more fulfilled life by providing excellent mental health services, housing, and supported living.
Do you have the desire to empower and promote independence and an interest in mental health?
Service User Engagement and Participation Lead – £31,200 £36,400 per annum (Salaries vary depending on experience)
Hours 37 hours per week, Monday – Friday
Department Adult Service Delivery
Location Littlemore, Oxfordshire
What You ll Be Doing:
Response are recruiting for a Service User Engagement and Participation Lead within Adult Service Delivery. The Engagement and Participation Lead provides leadership and operational oversight to embed lived experience across adult mental health services. The role ensures that people with lived experience, including peer workers, residents, and families can meaningfully shape service design, delivery, and improvement through co production and collaborative practice. Feedback and learning from people with lived experience is embedded across services. The role will:
• Develop and implement strategies to embed lived experience across services.
• Ensure Experts by Experience (EbEs) shape service design, delivery, and improvement.
• Influence organisational culture to value and integrate co production.
If you are a motivated individual looking for an exciting opportunity to contribute to a compassionate organisation, we want to hear from you!
Overall job responsibility – Further information can be found in the job description
Some of the core duties include:
- Develop, deliver, and evaluate the Adult Services lived experience strategy.
- Provide expert advice on co production, recovery approaches, and trauma informed practice.
- Attend key partnership meetings and represent Response (e.g., Oxfordshire Mental Health Partnership Involvement Group).
- Develop strong partnerships with external organisations to improve meaningful activity and self-worth for residents.
- Ensure lived experience perspectives influence improvement across Response and partner organisations.
- Gather client views, collate feedback, implement changes, and embed you said, we did mechanisms.
- Develop opportunities for people with lived experience to participate, volunteer, or work within Response (e.g., projects, interview panels, peer support roles).
- Develop strategy and approaches that build positive, trusting relationships with families and carers.
- Recruit, supervise, coach, and support the Lived Experience Support Worker.
- Provide reflective practice, skills development, and wellbeing support for lived experience staff.
- Build strong relationships with community partners and lived experience networks to increase meaningful engagement.
- Support services in developing and delivering client and family/friend engagement.
- Monitor and evaluate the impact of lived experience involvement and report findings to management.
- Collect & analyse data that demonstrates our impact across the services.
- Support communications for engagement and participation, including newsletters and client stories; provide content for social media and organisational engagement.
- Build strong working relationships with managers across adult services to ensure standards are met.
- Comply and remain up to date with all safeguarding policies and procedures for both Adults and Children and Young People.
The Successful Applicant:
Our main priority for all our roles at Response is to find people that can live our values every day Caring, Safe, Creative and Aspirational. We provide excellent training on everything else, but we do ask that you have:
- Educated to A Level or equivalent.
- Knowledge of national requirements and drivers for client, carer, family experience and involvement.
- Strong understanding of co production, recovery principles, and trauma informed practice Mechanisms for gathering feedback.
- Detailed understanding of mental health and wellbeing challenges
- Knowledge of Safeguarding procedures.
- Engaging with clients, their family and friends individually and in groups.
- Able to run focus groups, engagement and larger events confidently and effectively.
- Ability to understand and analyse data and utilise this to inform onward actions or decision making.
- Strong relationship building and coaching skills including relations with individuals using services, staff, internal and external stakeholders.
- Excellent verbal and written communication skills, with attention to detail and ability to adapt this for the intended audience.
- Able to work across large geographical area and travel when desired to projects across different counties.
- A genuine interest in mental health and well-being with a commitment to delivering Response’s mission.
What We Offer:
- 33 days annual leave (inclusive of bank holidays)
- Blue Light card and other discounted shopping
- Employee Assistance Plan – with access to free counselling
- Cycle to Work Scheme (after probation)
- Enhanced family friendly leave
- Flexible and agile working opportunities (role dependent)
- Professional qualification sponsorship and study leave
- £500 refer a friend bonus scheme
- Optional health cash care plan with money off prescriptions and treatments
- Wellbeing hub and mental wellbeing support app approved by NHS
- Free flu jabs
- Free DBS application
If this Service User Engagement and Participation Lead position sounds like the role for you then please apply today, we would love to hear from you! This vacancy may be closed early. To learn more about Response please visit our website. Closing date – 25/03/2026
Our employees and clients come from all over the world, we proudly promote a friendly and inclusive culture and are registered as a Disability Confident Employer. We are committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of our clients. All our roles require an enhanced DBS check, two references from most recent employers and you must have the right to work in the UK.