My name is Angela Mitchell, and I am a lived experience contributor, educator, advocate and community leader. My work is rooted in a simple belief: the people who live with services every day are experts in their own experiences and should be equal partners in shaping them.
My own lived experience comes from caring for both of my parents. My mother has limited mobility and complex health needs, and my father is living with cancer. Through supporting them, I experienced first-hand the challenges many families face when navigating health and social care systems. Like many people, I found myself coordinating care, repeating our story to different professionals and advocating to ensure the right support was available. These experiences taught me that people with lived experience hold valuable expertise that should influence how services are designed, delivered and evaluated.
My journey into co-production began through Sandwell's co-production programme. Through my involvement with the African Caribbean Community Initiative in West Bromwich, I was invited to represent my community by joining the Sandwell Co-production Panel.
As I became more involved, I was invited by Sue Eagle to join the Annual Carers Group. It was through these experiences that I began to recognise something significant within my own community. Many people were providing substantial care and support for family members but did not identify themselves as carers. They simply saw it as their responsibility to look after loved ones. As a result, many were surviving the demands of caring without accessing the support, information or services available to them.
Recognising this gap, I established the West Midlands Community African Caribbean Lived Experience Group, which initially began as a small WhatsApp group where people could share experiences, advice and encouragement. As confidence grew, so did the group, developing into regular community meetings where people with lived experience could come together, support one another and discuss the challenges they faced.
Through my co-production work, I met Keymn, whose encouragement and guidance became an important part of my journey. We had many conversations about what genuine co-production looks like and how people with lived experience can influence change beyond consultation. Through these discussions, she introduced me to a range of opportunities and initiatives through West Midlands ADASS, enabling me to become involved in wider regional co-production work and to contribute to projects that influence policy, practice and service improvement.
Looking back, what began as one invitation to join a local co-production panel has grown into opportunities to influence local services, establish community networks, contribute to regional initiatives and, more recently, be appointed as a Lived Experience Contributor with the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR). It has reinforced my belief that when organisations invest in people with lived experience, they create leaders who go on to strengthen communities and improve services for others.