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Despite the recent growing interest in user‐led organisations (ULOs), they remain an under‐researched area of volunteer sector activity, with the majority of the literature emanating from North America. This article attempts to redress this imbalance by reporting on the innovatory features and challenges facing mental health ULOs in England, particularly in light of recent government policy prioritising generic pandisability ULOs. In‐depth qualitative interviews were undertaken with a purposive sample of 48 service users and staff from four geographically dispersed mental health ULOs in England. Innovatory features identified by staff running and service users attending mental health ULOs were: being user‐led; their non‐hierarchical organisational structures; and community‐inclusive activities. The challenges identified were: maintaining a user‐led ethos; managing the tension between being user‐led or user‐managed; and relationships with funders. Recent policies that recognise and promote the development of ULOs are encouraging, although the emphasis on generic, pan‐disability ULOs may impede the innovatory ethos and development of mental health ULOs.

This article gives an overview and selected findings from a study funded by the Mental Health Foundation in 2007, which was collaboratively carried out by researchers at Anglia Ruskin University and two freelance researchers. The research team included members with direct and indirect experience of mental distress. The findings add to our knowledge of an under‐studied part of the voluntary sector: organisations run for and by people who share the same health or social condition. The reported study explored and identified the innovative organisational features and funding arrangements of four mental health user‐led organisations, as well as assessing service users' perceptions of the role that such organisations play in promoting social inclusion and recovery from their mental health problems.

The purpose of this paper is to explore user leadership in peer support practice by reviewing existing evidence and models of delivery, investigating the recently developed term of “authentic” peer support and reflecting on challenges and opportunities for the future.

The paper presents and discusses views and evidence on peer support policy and practice, found in the current literature, grass roots peer support experts’ presentations and contributions to conferences, a national peer support network, key policy documents and the work of Together for Mental Wellbeing.

Peer support benefits are widely documented as is its history, rooted in user leadership. More recently, peer support is acknowledged in a number of key mental health policy documents as seen to be key in the response to current quality and cost agendas. There has been a simultaneous increase of “formal” peer support as practiced by large service providers and a gradual shift away from its “user led” origins. Against the background of the current economic climate and implications for mental health services, there seems to be a need to pause and reflect on current peer support practice and rethink the way forward.

This paper's emphasis on the authenticity of peer support covers new ground in relation to an important topical debate.

User‐led organisations are increasingly providing services themselves, but it is not always easy to overcome the barriers of bureaucracy and officialdom when you are inexperienced in project development. This is the story of the trials, tribulations and eventual success of a group of users in rural Dorset, who are keen to use their newly acquired experience for the benefit of others who may want to do the same.

The purpose of this paper is to offer an account of the role of user‐led organisations in a radically different approach to delivering local authority adult social care management functions.

Drawing on the evaluation of a two‐year project funded by the Office for Disability Issues as part of the Independent Living Strategy, this paper highlights some of the key learning points from this project.

The central finding is that user‐led organisations are capable of delivering this radically different way of working with quality (and possibly cost) gains. However, there are potentially significant barriers to overcome in order to achieve this.

The Government is exploring a greater role for the voluntary and community sector including user‐led organisations. It is widely acknowledged that “peer” support activity should play a key part in delivering the “personalisation agenda”. This paper highlights the fact that delivering this will require leadership, partnership and trust. A strategic vision is needed – but so is an eye for detail on operational delivery issues.

With service user led training becoming more popular in the training of mental health workers, little attention seems to have been paid to how the trainers themselves experience this and the effect it has on them. Here Shaun Johnson, who has worked as the facilitator of a service user led training organisation and is a service user trainer himself, gives an overview of the issues and difficulties faced by service user trainers and how their lives could be made so much easier if unintentionally created problems could be avoided.

Around the UK, a number of strategies are being employed to expand the availability and increase the accessibility of psychological treatments for anxiety and depression. Recommended interventions include supported self‐help programs based on CBT principles such as computerised cognitive behavioural therapies (CCBT) for mild‐to‐moderate depression, phobia, and panic. This paper seeks to describe innovative third sector, service‐user led CCBT clinics commissioned within Greater Manchester.

The paper describes how the project was initially set up, how the services are managed, how they work, and the impact of these services on the population they serve.

The CCBT clinic achieves a high throughput of service‐users, including more than one‐third accessing the service through self‐referral. Intake and outcome measures suggest that CCBT service users are representative of both the local population and those accessing increasing access to psychological therapies (IAPT) services for common mental health problems. For those engaging with the CCBT service, outcomes are equivalent to those reported in NHS‐based demonstration IAPT services. Service users highly value the service offered including the computer‐based programs and the support offered by paid and voluntary staff.

Roll out of this effective service model is recommended.

This paper has described a successful third‐sector, user‐led, CCBT self‐help clinic offering a Tier‐2 service for anxiety and depression that meets local needs. This will be of interest to service users, providers, and commissioners who want to develop similar services.

Disabled women are reported to be between twice and five times more likely to experience sexual violence than non-disabled women or disabled men; when these are hate crimes they compound harms for both victims and communities.

This user-led research explores how disabled and Deaf victims and Survivors most effectively resist the harm and injustice they experience after experiencing disablist hate crime involving rape.

Feminist standpoint methods are employed with reciprocity as central. This small-scale peer research was undertaken with University ethics and supervision over a five year period. Subjects (n=522) consisted of disabled and Deaf victims and Survivors in North of England.

The intersectional nature of violence against disabled women unsettles constructed macro binaries of public/private space violence and the location of disabled women as inherently vulnerable. Findings demonstrate how seizing collective identity can usefully resist re-victimization, tackle the harms after disablist hate crime involving rape and resist the homogenization of both women and disabled people.

The chapter outlines inequalities in disabled people’s human rights and recommends service and policy improvements, as well as informing methods for conducting ethical research.

This is perhaps the first user-led, social model based feminist standpoint research to explore the collective resistance to harm after experiencing disablist hate crime involving rape. It crossed impairment boundaries and included community living, segregated institutions and women who rely on perpetrators for personal assistance. It offers new evidence of how disabled and Deaf victims and Survivors can collectively unsettle the harms of disablist hate crime and rape and achieve justice and safety on a micro level.

The purpose of this paper is to outline what peer support is, covering its history, variations and benefits, then goes on to discuss what the challenges have been to authenticity and what the future holds for peer support.

The authors argue for the necessity of service user leadership in peer support based on both the Service User Involvement Directorate’s (SUID’s) experience and UK-wide learning.

Peer support brings wellbeing and confidence benefits both to the supporter and the supported. However, the lack of understanding of what peer support is, the current climate of austerity and over-professionalisation can threaten the transformational power of genuine peer support.

Peer support is always evolving, and there are areas like the criminal justice service and secure services where more work needs to be done.

Commissioners/funders of mental health services should recognise the value of peer support and its potential for better wellbeing outcomes, while understanding the necessity of service user leadership to maximise its beneficial potential.

The paper looks at peer support at the point in time a decade after the formation of the SUID at Together and four years since the UK mental health strategy No Health Without Mental Health (Department of Health, 2011) and explores the challenges faced at a time when the value of peer support is generally accepted in legislation.