Luton’s Joanna Moonesinghe works to help healthcare professionals understand the needs of carers and the value they can provide in providing care.

How are you involved with the Trust?
I was a carer for my husband, Ananga, who was diagnosed with dementia and later cancer. He passed away in June 2023 and we were married for nearly 49 years.
I work with the Trust through People Participation to help healthcare professionals understand the needs of carers and to understand how important carers can be in providing care for the loved ones they support.

How did you first work with the Trust?
My first involvement was as a member of interview panels for potential new recruits. As a carer, my role on the panel was to consider if the candidate would have the best interests of their patient at heart. I would see that 90 per cent of the time. I now also train other service users and carers for interview panels.

What is your main role now?
I help provide training for clinicians through the Trust’s Academy of Lived Experience (ALE).
The academy helps healthcare professionals consider the needs of service users and carers as real people, not just patients, and how really good care should look.

How do clinicians respond to the insight and training you share?
It is so important that professionals hear from people with lived experience as a service user or carer, from both a mental and physical health perspective.
It can completely change their viewpoint about how to engage with people and also how to involve people in their care.
The whole approach is about creating space where you work together and with respect.

How has PP and ALE helped you?
I have gained so much confidence. It gave me an outside interest while I was learning to care for my husband. It has also empowered me to speak up when things aren’t working and then help make positive change.

How can carers help NHS professionals?
Learning is a two-way street and carers have incredible experience and knowledge that the NHS can benefit from. A doctor who attended a talk I was giving said ‘because of you I now change the way I talk to patients and carers’. That was the best thing ever.

Learn more about the Academy of Lived Experience (ALE):
https://www.elft.nhs.uk/service-users-and-carers/academy-lived-experience-ale