Project Manager – Lived Experience Health Programmes User Voice

This is an exciting new leadership role within User Voice’s London team, responsible for delivering two major programmes at the intersection of Health Justice and forensic mental health services. The Project Manager will lead the planning, delivery, and evaluation of these initiatives, ensuring they meet strategic objectives and deliver meaningful impact for participants and stakeholders. This role is ideal for someone with lived experience of the criminal justice system who is already leading complex projects and managing teams and partnerships.

About User Voice: User Voice exists to reduce the harm caused by crime and punishment. We bring people impacted by the justice system together with those who deliver its services to create much needed transformative change. We do this by working with people with convictions to support and develop their confidence, skills and mindsets. They then deliver our programmes to many more people who are impacted by the criminal justice system.

• Peer research and consultations that amplify lived experience insights
• Supporting people with experience of the justice system to lead change in prisons and probation, whilst transforming their own lives.
• Transforming the criminal justice system through influencing policy and practice to create a safer society.

We are currently working in 40 prisons across England, with 100 lived experience volunteers, reaching over 1,000 people in the system a month, giving us the largest organisational range in terms of lived experience insights. We work with HM Prison and Probation Service, HM Inspectorate of Probation, the NHS, Local Authorities and Police commissioners. We do this because we’ve been there too – in court, in prison, on probation – so we understand the challenges first hand and use our lived expertise to inform our model. Nine out of ten of our staff have criminal convictions and experience of mental health problems, problematic drug or alcohol use, homelessness, care, or exclusion.

Role Overview: This is a leadership role within User Voice’s London team, responsible for delivering two major programmes at the intersection of Health Justice and forensic mental health services. The Project Manager will lead:

• NHS England (London) Health & Justice PPV Service — Supporting Patient & Public Voice (PPV) Representatives across London prisons, IRCs, courts, Liaison & Diversion services, and wider H&J commissioning activity, ensuring safe, independent, impactful lived experience involvement.
• NLFC Lived Experience Co‑Production Programme — Supporting and expanding the lived experience workforce across secure inpatient forensic mental health services and community forensic pathways through training provided alongside our external training provider, supervision, facilitation of the Patient Council, and co‑production initiatives.

This role will suit someone with personal lived experience of the criminal justice system, combined with substantial project management experience and experience in working in mental health settings, ideally secure or forensic services. It requires excellent leadership and project management skills, deep understanding of trauma aware practice, and the ability to operate confidently within prisons, secure hospitals, and NHS commissioning environments.

Key Responsibilities:

• Lead the delivery of activity across London prisons, IRCs, police custody, and courts, ensuring safe, high quality engagement.
• Recruit, train, and support volunteers with lived experience of health & justice services.
• Ensure activity is independent, trauma aware, and adheres to safeguarding, vetting, governance, and NHS information governance requirements.
• Facilitate patient engagement, focus groups, surveys, rapid insight gathering, and feedback loops.
• Produce impact reports, summary reports, and support commissioners with s13Q duties.
• Maintain relationships with prisons, NHS providers, HMPPS, IRCs, and partner organisations.

NLFC Co Production & Lived Experience Workforce Development:

• Facilitate weekly NLFC Patient Council meetings and induction for new members.
• Provide monthly group supervision to Peer Engagement Workers, ensuring reflective practice, emotional support, and skills development.
• Deliver a comprehensive training programme for all lived experience roles.
• Support the expansion of lived experience roles to include people with a learning disability and autistic people.
• Co‑design and deliver annual programme work plans aligned to commissioning priorities.
• Lead involvement projects with LDA experts by experience, including training, reasonable adjustments, and supporting them to gather and analyse feedback.
• Produce accessible, co‑produced reports and support the presentation of findings to the Commissioning Hub.

Governance, Quality & Contract Management:

• Ensure the service is compliant with NHS safeguarding, security clearance, data protection, and safer recruitment procedures.
• Manage project budgets, staff supervision, risk assessments, and operational policies.
• Monitor performance against KPIs across both programmes, providing quarterly reports and action plans where required.
• Lead continuous improvement of service models, including local Target Operating Models.

Person Specification:

• Personal lived experience of the criminal justice system.
• Experience working in mental health services, ideally including secure, forensic, inpatient, or specialist community forensic settings.
• Strong experience managing complex projects, partnerships, and multi‑agency work.
• Experience facilitating engagement with marginalised people, including vulnerable or high‑risk groups.
• Experience supporting or managing volunteers, peer workers, or lived experience staff.
• Strong communication and relationship building skills across NHS, prison, and community partners.
• Ability to analyse qualitative and quantitative data and produce high quality insight/impact reports.
• Strong understanding of safeguarding, risk management, information governance, and trauma awareness approaches.
• Ability to manage competing priorities across multiple systems (NHS, prisons, community services).

• Experience working within the Health & Justice system (prisons, courts, IRCs, Liaison & Diversion).
• Experience supporting people with learning disabilities and autistic people.
• Knowledge of commissioning cycles, co‑production methods, and lived experience workforce development.
• Knowledge of NHS governance, s13Q duties, PPV frameworks, and quality assurance processes.
• Experience of delivering training, group supervision, or reflective practice sessions.

User Voice actively encourages applications from people with convictions and particularly welcomes applications from under‑represented groups within the criminal justice system. We are committed to creating a diverse and representative workforce, reflective of those that the organisation represents. We therefore actively encourage applications from all sections of the community regardless of race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, age, or disability.

This post is subject to an enhanced criminal record disclosure check via the Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) processes, as the post holder will have regular unsupervised access to vulnerable adults, young people and/or children. The purpose of the check is to ensure that the nature of the applicant’s criminal record, considered alongside evidence of the applicant’s rehabilitation, does not indicate that his or her employment in this role would put current service users at risk.