How Joanna Yates turned lived experience into a career helping others

When Joanna Yates first walked into an emotional skills group, she had no idea it would change the course of her life.

What began as a personal attempt to reconnect with coping strategies, eventually led her to discover a passion for supporting others – a passion that has since grown into a paid role within the NHS.

Joanna describes her mental health journey as one marked by challenges stretching back to her teenage years.

Living with ADHD and having received support from mental health services for many years, she had taken part in a wide range of therapies, but it was during a period of stability, after completing dialectical behavioural therapy (DBT), that things began to shift.

“I wasn’t really using my DBT skills anymore and I found it really hard to reconnect with them,” she says.

Wanting to refresh her memory, she joined an emotional skills course – a decision that would open unexpected doors.

Joanna repeated the course several times, partly to keep herself accountable and to ensure she held onto the tools she’d learned.

Her facilitators noticed she kept returning and began asking why she was coming back so often, especially as she clearly knew the material of the course so well.

“I explained my position and that’s when they suggested I join the Somerset Recovery College as a lived experience tutor,” Joanna says. “They could see I was giving more back to the group than I was gaining.”

What Joanna didn’t realise was that, when she went online to sign up, she accidentally joined our trust’s lived experience support team – then known as the recovery partners service – instead of the Recovery College… but it turned out to be a happy mistake!

“Being a lived experience partner seemed interesting, so I decided to carry on anyway, and everything stemmed from there,” she adds.

“From there, I began taking on a number of tasks, such as co‑producing leaflets, joining project groups, becoming involved in research and attending open forums.

“Though nervous at first, especially sitting on interview panels with professionals who would previously have been the ones looking after me, I felt welcomed, valued and increasingly confident.”

Joanna’s confidence and influence grew quickly, and she began helping to develop the Branching Out project, from its earliest consultation stages, through to its implementation and expansion into local communities. She saw first‑hand how lived experience can improve services and reduce ward readmissions.

One of Joanna’s proudest achievements is the peer support group she set up following the emotional skills course – a group she continues to facilitate more than a year and a half later.

Alongside her volunteer work, Joanna also began picking up shifts as a bank healthcare assistant on the wards.

When colleagues noticed the valuable role she was playing within the Branching Out group, psychologist, Dr Helen Schur, and lived experience team leader, Paul Milverton, arranged for her to continue contributing as a bank worker, allowing her to take on greater responsibility in a formal, paid capacity.

Joanna says the work has been both humbling and empowering. She adds: “It’s been really reflective for me, as after all the negative experiences I’ve had, being able to see services from the other side has helped me process a lot of that. It’s helped me in my own mental health journey as well.”

She believes lived experience partners bring insight that can directly shape better care. Through projects such as Culture of Care, Joanna has influenced practice across wards and helped colleagues to understand what compassionate, inclusive care looks like from the perspective of someone who has been on the receiving end.

“It’s amazing to actually see the impact we have,” she says. “Sometimes you even see a physical shift in colleagues when something clicks, and it inspires them to make a real change.”

Joanna hopes to see the lived experience programme continue to grow, and she remains passionate about raising awareness so that more colleagues understand the value the partners bring.

For her, the biggest reward is seeing how her journey can help others. “I’ve grown as a person. I’ve learned I can challenge things when needed, in a supportive way, and even when change isn’t immediate, it’s still worth doing. Sometimes messages take a while to make a difference, but they do.”

From service user, to volunteer, to bank healthcare assistant and active contributor in service improvement, Joanna’s journey shows what’s possible when lived experience is recognised not as a barrier, but as a strength.

And for Joanna, that journey is far from over.