The Way Ahead Starts with Listening
Developing services with people, rather than simply designing them for people.
World Mental Health Day 2026
This World Mental Health Day, we’re thinking about the value of lived experience — not simply as something to listen to, but as something that can help shape better support.
At East Surrey Community Connections, lived experience is already part of the way we work.
Real experience. Real connection. Real change.
Through peer support, people with similar experiences can come together to listen, share and support one another. It can offer a different kind of understanding: the reassurance that comes from speaking to someone who genuinely knows something of what you may be going through. East Surrey Community Connections
But lived experience can also play a much bigger role.
Waythrough’s ten-year strategy, The Way Ahead, puts the experiences of the people we support at the heart of how services develop and change.
‘Peer support’ shows how one person’s experience can help another.
Knowing what good support feels like
The strategy begins with Waythrough’s Life Experience Council — people who are being supported by Waythrough, or who have been supported in the past.
Their message is a powerful one: people with lived experience know what good support feels like. They know the difference it can make to be treated as a whole person, rather than being expected to fit neatly into a particular service or category.
That thinking sits at the heart of The Way Ahead.
Waythrough recognises that people’s lives do not divide neatly into boxes. Mental health, physical health, relationships, housing, finances, substance use, confidence and community can all overlap.
The strategy is therefore about finding more joined-up and human ways of providing support — and challenging barriers that can make it harder for people to get the help they need.
People with lived experience know what good support feels like.
Working with, not simply for
One of the most important ideas in The Way Ahead is co-production.
In everyday language, that means developing services with people, rather than simply designing them for people.
Waythrough has committed to becoming a stronger system leader, partner and co-producer, while continuing to work with the people it supports, staff, volunteers and commissioners to develop new ways of working.
For us at Community Connections, that principle feels very familiar.
Our support starts with the individual: their interests, their goals and what they would like to work towards. Alongside one-to-one guidance, people can access workshops, groups and peer support, helping them build connections and move forward at a pace that feels right for them.
Nationally, Waythrough describes this approach simply: when someone comes for support, the starting point is what they want and what they are capable of, rather than focusing only on problems or what they lack.
Lived experience can help us understand where services work well, where barriers remain and what needs to change.
From individual experience to wider change
Peer support shows how one person’s experience can help another.
But The Way Ahead takes that idea further.
Lived experience can help us understand where services work well, where barriers remain and what needs to change.
Over the next ten years, Waythrough has set itself an ambitious goal to save a million lives and enhance a million more. To work towards that, it aims to connect services more effectively, invest in staff and volunteers as drivers of local change and develop new ways of supporting people in their communities.
That is a huge ambition.
But change does not only happen at national level.
It happens in conversations, groups, communities and local services. It happens when people feel able to speak about what has helped them — and what has not. It happens when that experience is taken seriously and used to improve what comes next.
Change does not only happen at national level.
It happens in conversations, groups, communities and local services.
Real experience. Real connection. Real change.
World Mental Health Day gives us an opportunity to talk about mental health.
But listening should not end when the awareness day does.
At Community Connections, we believe lived experience brings knowledge, empathy and understanding. Through peer support it can help create connection between people. Through working together, it can also help shape stronger, more responsive services.
Because lived experience isn’t just something we hear.
It’s something we work with.
And that is an important part of The Way Ahead.
Lived experience isn’t just something we hear.
It’s something we work with.
Find out more
Find out more
Find out more about Waythrough’s 10-year strategy, The Way Ahead and how lived experience, partnership and co-production are helping shape the future of support:
The Way Ahead – Waythrough’s 10-year strategy
Read The Way Ahead
You can also find out more about East Surrey Community Connections, including our one-to-one support, groups, workshops and peer support:
Visit East Surrey Community Connections
