Working It Out Together

The concise workbook for Lived Experience-centred mental health and wellbeing research practice brings together the most useful tools and exercises from the full Working it out together toolkit into a shorter, easy-to-use format.

Featuring Dr Cat!

Throughout the workbook you’ll find short, plain-language reflections and reminders from Dr Catherine Brasier, offering gentle guidance to help teams pause, reflect and stay grounded in Lived and Living Experience principles. These inserts act as helpful checkpoints — encouraging teams to consider voice, power, accessibility and impact at each stage of the work.

What the workbook covers

The workbook is structured around Wellways’ Six Steps of the Research Life Cycle and 17 Working it out together Research Actions, including:

• connecting with communities and identifying questions that matter
• embedding Lived and Living Experience leadership, power sharing and decision-making
• designing accessible, inclusive and culturally responsive methods
• planning for analysis, dissemination and impact in ways that honour Lived and Living Experience
• using tools such as the Lived Experience Action Log and reporting guidelines to track and demonstrate impact

Who the workbook is for

The workbook supports:

• research teams designing or reviewing projects
• services and organisations commissioning or partnering on research
• Lived and Living Experience collaborators seeking language and tools to influence project design
• students and early-career researchers learning what high-quality Lived Experience-centred research practice looks like
• policy, evaluation and design teams working with community expertise

The toolkit and workbook for Lived Experience-centred mental health and wellbeing research practice is the comprehensive version of the resource.

It includes:

• detailed step-by-step guidance
• extended explanations and commentary
• templates, exercises and reflective questions
• evidence summaries and references
• practical examples from the pilot and broader project learnings

It is designed for teams seeking deep guidance on building Lived and Living Experience into the foundations of their research, governance and decision-making structures.

The REPORT — A toolkit and workbook for Lived Experience-centred mental health and wellbeing research practice offers the context behind the project.

It provides a overview of:

• the project’s origins and aims
• the literature and scoping work that informed the toolkit
• methodology and engagement approach
• key insights from participants, partners and collaborators
• implications for research teams, funders and the broader system

This report is particularly useful for people wanting to understand the foundations, evidence base and rationale behind the toolkit and workbook.

The A brief pilot of the research toolkit and concise workbook summarises how the tools were trialled in real-world settings.

It includes:

• what worked well in practice
• where teams experienced challenges
• suggestions for refinement
• insights from participants across roles, disciplines and Lived and Living Experience backgrounds

The pilot provides a clear picture of how the resources operate in practice and how they can be best implemented.

The Working It Out Together toolkit is now live. This video captures its launch from our 'Reform in Practice' sector engagement event, including an introduction to the toolkit, a personal keynote from its lead researcher, Dr Cat, and a panel discussion on what it really takes to centre lived and living experience in mental health and wellbeing research.

WIOT launch video