What we do

NSUN regularly responds to policy developments at the intersection of mental health, disability, and human rights. We work to influence decision-makers and advocate for more nuanced responses to mental ill-health, distress, and trauma. We do this by providing briefings, connecting with other groups, and supporting campaigning work by our members/grassroots groups. You can stay up to date with our latest policy-related news here.

This page sets out our approach, our priority areas, and our support offer for members working on campaigns and policy issues. We have also published a more detailed reflective article on our campaigning and policy work, and its tensions, which you can read here.

Our approach

• We take a critical, political, and rights-based approach to policy work; centring social justice, anti-oppression, and the social and material determinants of mental ill-health, distress, and trauma.
• We prioritise collaboration in supporting our members to campaign on issues that matter to them, and working jointly with/as members of other rights-based campaigning coalitions. 
• We want to build an alternative approach to policy work. We may work within existing policy structures when we feel it may advance our aims, but we don’t let this distract us from imagining alternatives that better serve our communities. 
• We challenge tokenistic and harmful approaches to lived experience involvement. NSUN is often called upon to offer the “lived experience voice”, but while we advocate for our membership, we do not claim to speak on their behalf, and recognise that there is no such thing as one survivor/service user voice.

Campaigns & policy coalitions we are part of include:

• The Disabled People’s Organisation Forum
• The Disability Benefits Consortium
• The Disability and Migration Network
• Campaign for Disability Justice
• The Equally Ours Network

Our priorities

We work towards a world in which responses to mental health are nuanced, rights-based and informed by the perspectives of well-resourced grassroots groups. In doing this, we challenge apolitical understandings of mental health, recognising the impact of government policy, state harm, and systemic marginalisation.

We are open to all work conducive to these aims, but our priority areas at the moment are as follows:

1. Challenging poor mental health care

We work to challenge poor and harmful practices within (mental) healthcare. This includes: 

• Acknowledging and resisting institutional abuse, neglect, and coercion in mental health care. This may include, but isn’t limited to, the underfunding of mental health services.
• Advocating for plurality, nuance and choice in responses to mental ill-health, distress, and trauma. 
• Resisting the criminalisation of distress, including police involvement in (mental) healthcare, as well as paying attention to new legislation relevant to mental health. 
• Challenging ableist and sanist approaches to mental ill-health, distress, and trauma within mental health settings and beyond. 

Examples of our work in this area

• Supporting and amplifying the work of the StopSIM coalition.
• Responding to the Metropolitan Police’s announcement that they will no longer attend mental health related call-outs. 
• Writing on key issues relating to abuse in mental health services.
• Highlighting the dangers of private detention in mental health and beyond.

2. Political responses to mental health

We work to challenge apolitical and individualised responses to mental health. This includes: 

• Challenging harmful structures that contribute to mental ill-health, distress and trauma including the impact of the cost of living crisis, austerity, government cuts, the hostile benefits system, precarious employment, housing, and state systems such as prisons and the immigration system. 
• Challenging racism within mental health settings and racist applications of the Mental Health Act. 
• Responding to new legislation and policy developments relevant to mental health.
• The mental health impact of increasing levels of transphobia and violence against trans people. This includes opposing transphobia and trans-hostility in (mental) health settings.

Examples of our work in this area

• Writing to the new Government’s Secretary of State for Health and Social Care to outline our priority areas of concern, and responding to the 10 Year Health Plan consultation with a focus on mental health.
• Our work throughout the review of the Mental Health Act.
• Opposing transphobic healthcare policy, including research on trans and non-binary people’s experiences of single-sex spaces, coordinating an open letter opposing transphobic developments in healthcare, and responding to the Cass Review.
• Working with fellow members of disability justice coalitions to challenge the harms of the welfare system, including proposed changes to PIP and Work Capability Assessments.
• Supporting members working to challenge legislation, including resourcing Make Space’s work on the Online Safety Act and the Criminal Justice Bill in relation to self-harm.
• Keeping members updated on key mental health/disability justice policy developments, e.g. our analysis of the Major Conditions Strategy.

3. Surveillance and data sharing in mental health

We work to tackle harmful surveillance and data sharing practices. This includes:

• Surveillance and data sharing in mental health settings, including within NHS services (for example during A&E visits, safeguarding processes, or in psychiatric inpatient settings). 
• Patient rights and privacy in technological “innovations” in (mental) health care. 
• Data sharing between the NHS and the Home Office as part of the hostile environment.
• Inappropriate reporting practices imposed on grassroots groups by funders.

Examples of our work in this area

• Supporting Stop Oxevision, including hosting an open letter opposing the use of blanket surveillance in inpatient settings. 
• Rejecting government proposals for increased data sharing between NHS England and the Home Office. 
• Submitting written evidence to Parliament’s Joint Committee on Human Rights (JCHR) inquiry into the protection of human rights in care settings. 
• Supporting members to highlight and resist health providers publishing photos of patients on social media.
• Resisting proposals to give the DWP bank spying powers.

Member campaign spotlight – Stop Oxevision

4. Resourcing grassroots groups

We work to dismantle structures that keep user-led, grassroots mental health groups precarious and limit their work to meet community-specific needs. This includes: 

• Influencing funder practice to encourage more accessible and appropriate funding routes for grassroots groups. 
• Challenging bureaucratic and institutional processes that limit the work of grassroots groups, including rigid and unsafe safeguarding practices. 
• Challenging extractive or tokenistic approaches to working with user-led and grassroots groups e.g., co-production initiatives.

Examples of our work in this area

• Conducting research to learn about how funder practice impacts grassroots/user-led groups.
• Running our own funding programmes for member groups. 
• Coordinating our weekly members’ bulletin to share information and resources with groups, and producing resources for grassroots groups.
• Working with other grassroots and user-led groups to advocate for abolitionist and community-led responses to so-called ‘serious youth violence’.
• Convening the Mental Health and Migrant Justice Networking Space, with activities including co-producing an open letter to funders.

Support for member policy and campaigns work

Please visit our page on supporting member policy and campaigns work to either alert us to a policy issue you think NSUN should be aware of or working on, or to request our support on a policy and campaigns issue you are working on as a NSUN member (someone with lived experience and/or someone who is part of a user-led group).