Back Lived Experience. Save CAPITAL

By CAPITAL October 6, 2025

For nearly 3 decades, CAPITAL has been there when the system wasn’t.

We have stood beside people. We have listened when no one else would. We have bridged the gap between hospital wards and the community, offering something most clinical services can’t: understanding rooted in lived experience.

Now we are being pushed to the margins.

Under the new £5 million Mental Health Support Services contract in Sussex, CAPITAL, our peer-led, mental health community support organisation, has been allocated just 1% of the budget.

This means an extreme and debilitating 80% cut to our funding.

Our inpatient peer support, which is trusted, proven and life-changing, is on the brink of being wiped out.

Not because we failed and not because it doesn’t work, but because the system is not designed to support independent, user-led organisations.

The facts speak for themselves

Last year alone:

1,900 people supported by CAPITAL
900 inpatients received peer support on Sussex’s mental health wards
95% said it helped
94% felt truly listened to
97% want to meet with a peer again

We delivered all of this for £256,000 per year – that is around £135 per person. Less than the cost of a single NHS outpatient appointment.

If just one fewer mental health team contact was needed per person because of our support, that would save the NHS an estimated £614,000. That is more than double what it costs to run the entire CAPITAL service.

Every £1 invested in CAPITAL is estimated to return £3 to £5 in avoided NHS costs.

This is not about performance. It is about priorities.

We raised our concerns

We challenged NHS Sussex. When we were not heard, we appealed to NHS England’s Independent Patient Choice and Procurement Panel.

The panel agreed we had a valid case, but told us they could not investigate. They lacked capacity.

So now, our peer-led organisation with thirty years of proven impact faces collapse. Not for lack of evidence, but because smaller, user-led organisations are being squeezed out by commissioning structures that were never built with us in mind.

This is not just about CAPITAL

This is about the future of lived experience within mental health and whether the system will continue to speak about people or finally learn to listen to them.

We hear constant talk of co-production, partnership, and lived experience. But what does it mean if organisations like CAPITAL, which actually embody these principles, are excluded?

Co-production without independent peer-led organisations is not co-production. It is tokenism.

CAPITAL has shaped services, utilised training opportunities, changed perspectives, changed culture and walked with thousands through their hard moments. We have proven that peer support works, that it saves money and that it saves lives.

Now, all of it is at risk.

Lived experience within mental health services saves lives

Lived experience matters.
Peer support is essential.
Co-production is the future.

Do not let a system that talks about lived experience cut out the organisations that live it every day.
Support real co-production.
Support independent peer-led organisations.
Support CAPITAL.

Because lived experience saves lives.
Because peer support works.
Because without us, the system will go back to speaking about people, instead of listening to them.

If you share our concern, please:

Raise this with colleagues, decision-makers, commissioners and MPs
Question the procurement model that sidelines user-led organisations
Promote through social media
Work with us to keep lived experience at the heart of West Sussex mental health services