Funder spotlight: Garfield Weston Foundation

Thanks to our amazing partners and funders, we are able to reach people with learning disabilities, autistic people and people with mental ill health or other challenges across the north-east. Our funder spotlight is one of our ways of saying thank you to the organisations that help make our work possible.

Garfield Weston Foundation

Funding from Garfield Weston has helped us to involve people with lived experience in the design and review of our services and to increase co-production approaches across our organisation. For example, their grant supported our Inclusive Working Group to develop more accessible recruitment processes. We did this by working with an Expert by Experience to co-design an accessible recruitment, induction and training programme for three Care and Treatment Review (CTR) Experts who have learning disabilities.

Our best practice in inclusion and co-production was recently recognised at the National Advocacy Awards 2022, where we won the Best-Co-production category which was made possible thanks to support from our funders such as Garfield Weston Foundation.

“I think it’s really important to let people’s voices be heard and to try and make sure that people in hospital have better lives. When I go out and talk to people, I feel like I’m making a difference” (Shaun, CTR Expert By Experience)