About Pink Sky Thinking:

 

Welcome to Pink Sky Thinking. My name is Tamar Jeynes and I provide consultancy from a Lived Experience Practitioner lens.  My work combines the open use of experiential understanding of living with and recieving services for a complex mental health condition, fused with working experience and training from a Master of Science award in improving and designing services for people with who live with similar conditions.  

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Services provided are listed in further detail on the website and include:

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• Training​

• Consultancy​

• Research

• Creative Projects

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I work in a freelance capacity and have a broad network of colleagues with a variety of expertise, disciplines and skillsets who I partner with dependant on the nature of the project being undertaken.  All collaborators, whether clinical or lived experience background, will have a good grounding in and understanding of co-production as a partnership model.

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What is the advantage of using this service?

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Pink Sky Thinking offers organisations a resource for genuine partnership with lived experience for problem solving, decision making, strategy design or service delivery.

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Most organisations include service user involvement of some form - it is usually a requirement of recieving funding for services.  Very few organisations have the structure or internal resource to go beyond asking people with mental health conditions to give an opinion on the services they recieve.  There are many barriers to genuinely partnering with them in a way that places equal weighting on their value and expertise within the existing employment structure.  This can include adequately understanding and implementing the unique adjustments needed to meet in terms of employment, undertaking the necessary specialised supervision and continual professional development.  In addition, keeping up with developments in this field and having an understanding of the varied perspectives that exist within the survivor movement is a challenge. 

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When your organisation employs the services Pink Sky Thinking provides, these needs are catered for.  I am a member of a fortnightly supervision group consisting of Lived Experiece Practitioners who work within leadership positions within the NHS or service user led organisations, which addresses and provides support for the unique challenges and dynamics that people who are openly use experiential knowledge within their work face.  Our shared passions and networks ensure that regional and national political, environmental and academic developments are shared.   

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Many Mental Health staff have lived experience of adverse mental health or caring for persons who experience mental distress, which draws them to working in this field.  However the current models and disciplines within mental health often contain barriers for being able to openly use the pricesless experiential knowledge clinicians may have alongside their valuable theoretical and working knowledge.  Mental Health staff with lived experience  

 

Within my own practice I am interested in the place where these coexist and being part of the movement of people who are working to find ways to include this perspective within services. 

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About me: 

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I fully embrace the difference that being wired a little uniquely brings.  I hope that the website serves the purpose of communicating that if you choose to work with me, you will absolutely be working with a creative, colourful, thoughtful person, who injects that passion into her work.  

 

It takes more energy to function in a world that has not yet worked out how to embrace difference.  It was curiosity as to how to be able to effectively work as a professional within marketing & research that led me towards working in mental health.  I Googled the struggles I was having and realised that people with complex mental health issues weren't expected to be more than their 'illness', and that this stigma ensured that no-one who wanted to be seen as a professional in any industry would risk sabotaging their career by 'coming out'.  It is one of the reasons why I am open about living with mental health issues as well as emphasising my academic and work experience.  The action of doing this helps to challenge the stereotypes and stigma that exist.  From personal experience, I know that other individuals who do this are a great source of comfort and support to me. 

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A quick synopsis of the more traditionally accepted academic and work experience 'credentials' are below:

 

I have worked as a Lived Experience Practitioner since 2010, when I first trained and worked with Emergence CIC delivering consultancy and training in Personality Disorder with the National KUF (Knowledge & Understanding Framework) team.  This work was delivered across the UK to a variety of NHS, forensic, public, private and voluntary sector organisations. I have also worked with the NHS since 2012 in the delivery and design of services for people diagnosed with Personality Disorder.

 

Prior to working within mental health I worked from my late teens as a commercial market research interviewer with Millward Brown, whose clients included global brands, with a focus on advertising and branding.  I attained professional qualifications in marketing though the Chartered Institute of Marketing.  In my mid 20s I experienced a breakdown and then undertook a BA Hons in Fine Art.  I practiced as a freelance artist and then fused the two disciplines together by working as a Research Officer within an Audience Development agency within the arts sector.  I attained Chartered Marketer status whilst working in this area and recieved Change Agent training through a publicly funded organisational development project.  I also worked as a Director on the Board of Full Potential Arts, a charity using creativity as a tool to facilitate positive mental health.  

 

I have found that the cross-disciplinary knowledge from working and training within both the arts and commercial marketing/research sectors have been extremely useful.  Marketing in its theoretical form seeks to position the fulfilment of customer needs as central and Fine Art as a discipline encourages the generation of work from new perspectives.  Both have been invaluable to me when understanding or resolving challenges faced within the field of Mental Health.

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