Roles for service users and carers
We are committed to working and engaging with service users, patients, family, friends, carers and communities in a wide range of ways.
Ensuring that all people’s views are heard at all levels and across all parts of the Trust is essential for creating and delivering improved access, experience and health outcomes for patients.
Service users and people who look after someone can get involved in the following ways:
- Providing your views as a representative at a service improvement meeting, working group or event.
- By expressing your interest in one of our Lived Experience Partner roles e.g.
- Training Lived Experience Partner
- Recruitment & Selection Lived Experience Partner
- PLACE Inspection (Patient Led Assessment of the Care Environment) Lived Experience Partner
- Contributing to the development of our strategies and plans.
You will be paid for your time. The rate of pay is £15.00 per hour. Payment for mileage will be reimbursed at the same rate as our staff who use their own vehicle for business mileage (currently 59p per mile).
When a vacancy is advertised, we are looking for people with lived experience of mental health to express their interest.
Current opportunities are listed on this page, below, and/or advertised by flyers and on noticeboards in the services where roles are available.
PLACE Partner
PLACE (Patient Led Assessments of the Care Environment) Partner
We are always looking for individuals to help us as part of our trust wide PLACE inspection team. Throughout the year the PLACE inspection team will visit all of our inpatient wards at Prestwich, Manchester, Bolton, Salford, Trafford, and Wigan, making sure that Greater Manchester Mental Health NHS Foundation Trust (GMMH) is providing the best environments for its service users. The team looks at a variety of standards such as: cleanliness, quality of the food, privacy and dignity, the buildings general condition and maintenance and how the environment supports the care of those with dementia.
We are looking for applications from service users and carers with recent experience of mental health wards.
We will be providing PLACE partner inspection training prior to you starting and ongoing 1:1 support.
Our PLACE Partners are paid for their time; the rate of pay is £15.00 per hour. We will reimburse all public travel expenses or mileage costs if using your own car.
For more information
Phone: 0161 938 4482
Alternatively, email: ruth.lyons@gmmh.nhs.uk
We look forward to hearing from you!
Poster: PLACE Assessor Poster 2026.pdf
Lived Experience Partners (Community Services)
Recruiting Lived Experience Partners to support access and engagement in our community services
Greater Manchester Mental Health NHS Foundation Trust (GMMH) is looking to ensure that the people who access/try to access our services and their families/carers across the Trust can share their experiences to support with the development of transforming policies & practice to ensure access and engagement to services is timely. We also want to consider how to support people where non-attendance or engagement is challenging.
We are looking for those with lived experience across communities. We want to hear your experiences whether this is positive or negative. We would value your support in developing our service delivery to ensure we get it right for you and for the ones your love/care for.
We are looking for expressions of interest from people with lived experience who have:
- Direct experience of accessing-or attempting to access community services.
- Can share their experiences of communication and support with regards to appointments.
- Broad understanding of, or interest in quality, safety and service improvement agendas.
- Strong communication skills and confidence in advocating for service user and carer perspectives at a strategic level.
- The ability to review detailed policies and offer constructive, thoughtful feedback.
- We want to engage with those who have had direct experience, to ensure effective decision making with future policies in GMMH.
You will be paid for your time in line with the Trust policy which is £15 per hour from 1 January 2026.
As we are at the start of the journey, we are not yet sure how the work will progress and over what period of time. There will be a couple of initial meetings to agree with people the way forward. These can be in person or via Teams dependent on preference.
We look forward to hearing from you!
To discuss/express your interest please email Jenni Mack (Jennifer.mack@gmmh.nhs.uk) or Candice French (Candice.french@gmmh.nhs.uk) by Tuesday 28 April 2026.
As a service user, relative or carer using our services, sometimes you may need to turn to someone for help, advice, and support.
Find resources for carers and service users Contact the Trust