Improving Our Services Together
We are on a journey to make our services more inclusive, accessible, and effective for everyone who needs them. Rethink Advice and Information Service (RAIS) is often the first point of contact for people engaging with Rethink Mental Illness. That’s why it’s so important that our work reflects Rethink Mental Illness’s wider commitment to embracing diversity and tackling mental health inequalities.
You can read more about Rethink’s approach and values here:
• Embracing Diversity – Our Commitment
• How We’re Tackling Mental Health Inequalities
Our journey so far
In 2024, we looked at who’s using RAIS and who isn’t. We realised we didn’t have enough data, so we’re now working on better ways to collect it. What we did find is that people from underserved communities aren’t accessing our service. We want to change that and make sure our support reaches everyone who needs it.
What do we mean by underserved communities?
When we say ‘underserved communities,’ we mean groups who may face extra barriers to getting the support they need. These barriers can include systemic barriers, stigma, or lack of representation. These can include people:
- Living with severe mental illness (SMI)
- From ethnically diverse communities
- From LGBTQI+ communities
- Living with disabilities
- Facing economic hardship or social exclusion
We believe everyone deserves support that reflects their experiences.
What’s changing in 2025
As of 1st January 2025, we’ll no longer be offering advice by email. This change will help us support people better by:
- Exploring new ways of offering advice and information – including developing a chatbot. This will help more people quickly find the answers they need from our website.
- Focusing on the ways people tell us they get the best advice – like our adviceline and webchat – so we can give the best possible support.
- Putting more time into improving our online information, which already answers most of the questions people ask.
- Improving how we collect diversity data, so we can keep learning, growing, and making our service more inclusive.
Why we’re asking for equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) information
To improve our service, we need to understand who we’re supporting and who we might be missing.
If you contact us, our advisers are likely to ask you questions about your background, such as your ethnicity, gender identity, or sexual orientation.
We understand that these questions can feel personal, and its always your choice whether to answer. But when you do share, it helps us build a better, fairer service.
This information helps us:
- Tailor support to meet the needs of different communities.
- Identify and engage with people who may not currently access our services.
- Develop our online information to reflect the diversity of the people that access it.
- Make sure our service is fair, inclusive and meets everyone’s needs.
Working together
We know we can’t do this alone. That’s why we want to work directly with people from underserved communities to co-produce improvements to our services. That means:
- Listening to people with lived experience of mental illness.
- Inviting people who’ve used our advice service, or read our online information, to share their feedback.
- Creating advice and information based on what people with mental health challenges tell us they need.
How can I be involved?
We’re working to make our information panel more diverse by collecting EDI data from current members. This will help us reach and include more voices from underrepresented groups. To learn more about our information panel and how you can join click here.
When we work together, our service becomes more inclusive and genuinely helpful. If you would like to know more or have any questions or feedback, please do contact us on feedback@rethink.org
Thank you
We’re grateful for your support as we continue this journey. Together, we can build a service that works for everyone. Your voice matters, and we’re grateful to everyone helping us build a better, more inclusive service.