A year in the Research Community: 2024

The Research Community is at the centre of all the work we do at Money and Mental Health. Without all of our members’ valuable insight we wouldn’t know what recommendations to make, or what changes to push for. In this blog post we’d like to spotlight the contributions of our Research Community members in 2024 to demonstrate how important they are to the work we do – we truly couldn’t do it without them. 

For people who don’t know, the Research Community is a group of nearly 4,000 people who have lived experience of mental health problems. Members share their insights with us by taking part in surveys, discussions and events, which we use to determine what changes we push the government, banks, insurers, energy and water companies to make.

We started 2024 with a total of 5,368 members and we’re closing out the year with 3,570 members (November). For a bit more detail about the make-up of the Research Community, take a look at the chart below:

*Whilst experiences of people from minoritised backgrounds are not all the same we’ve chosen to show this statistic to demonstrate the broad breakdown of demographics within the Research Community. 

**These figures reflect the percentage of members who gave data on that demographic, not percentages of the Research Community overall.

Throughout the year we’ve undertaken our regular re-consent process, where we ask members who have been part of the Community for the past two years whether they’d like to remain. It’s normal for membership lists like this to fluctuate, and whilst there are fewer members in the Research Community now, we’re pleased that current members are more engaged. They are, on average, taking part in more research activities than they were back in January – meaning that we’re hearing more from individual members and hearing from more members in general about their experiences and the changes that they’d like to see us make.

We’ve launched four major projects in 2024 that have been the culmination of work we did with the Research Community over the last two years. 

We opened the year with the launch of our Mortgages project, which stemmed from the survey responses of 219 members, a focus group made up of 10 members and an event which one Research Community member recorded a speech for. 

In the Spring we launched our project looking into how persistent money and mental health problems can be prevented, thanks to the survey responses of 491 members, a focus group made up of six members and a launch event which one Research Community member spoke at. 

We welcomed Autumn with the launch of our project looking into the psychological toll of local and national government debt collection practices. This was informed by the survey responses of 116 members, a focus group of eight members and two events which the same Research Community member spoke at. 

Finally, we saw in the Winter again with the publication of Shining a light, the first report from our Gambling Harms Action Lab (GHAL), which explores the role of financial services in tackling gambling harms. This project was shaped by the 193 responses from Research Community members and presented at a launch event featuring the testimony of one of our Research Community members. To help shape their work over the coming years, GHAL has created a steering committee featuring five Research Community members.

Alongside these projects, we’ve completed three surveys and one focus group this year for our Mental Health Accessible programme. These involved 341 members and hearing their views  on how banks, insurers, energy and water companies can provide better services for people experiencing mental health problems.

We’ve also responded to government policy on access to debt advice, new rules set out for financial service providers, and reforms to the Mental Health Act – all thanks to the input from the 456 Research Community member survey responses we received about their experiences.

This year, we were also able to feed into the government’s financial inclusion agenda by hosting a focus group with six Research Community members and civil servants from the Treasury.

Take a look at these 2024 summary statistics:

As well as lots of external projects, we’ve been excited to  develop our new organisational strategy this year, which sets the direction of our work over the next five years; our Research Community is at the core of that. So, naturally, we wanted to hear the valuable insights and suggestions community members had – to help ensure our strategy positions us an impactful organisation for those experiencing money and mental health problems.

To do this we shared a survey which received 246 responses. To hear about these insights in more detail, we then created an Advisory Group with eight Research Community members who have been helping us draft the strategy itself. 

Besides sharing insights and experiences which allow us to push for the changes that will positively impact people experiencing mental health problems, members of our Research Community have written blogs, appeared in the media, and attended events, roundtables and panels at both the Labour and Conservative party conferences. 

Over the course of the year five different members of the Research Community took part in events and panels, some sharing their insights at multiple events both in-person or through pre-recorded interviews. We’re very grateful that we’ve heard from a member of our Research Community at every event we organised in 2024.

Over the next year we’re eager to continue to involve the Research Community throughout our work, be that through research and policy projects or in determining how we function as an organisation, in newer and more engaged ways. Already our ongoing project looking at the impact of ethnicity on the experience of money and mental health problems is training Research Community members to conduct their own interviews.

We wouldn’t have been able to achieve what we have without the support and wisdom of the Research Community. We’re so grateful for the time they’ve spent sharing their insights with us and we’re looking forward to having more of an impact together in the year to come!

If you’re interested in sharing your experiences to help us have an impact you can join the Research Community here. 

And if you’re already a member of the Research Community and would like to volunteer to take part in any of our events please let us know by sending us an email to: [email protected].