11/05/2026
Please feel free to share:
You may or may not be aware that today marks the beginning of Mental Health Awareness Week.
I am a member of a group called POPS, which supports families and carers navigating the mental health system while supporting loved ones living with serious mental illness. Today, members across the group are emailing their local MPs en masse to share their experiences, struggles, and the realities carers face every day.
If you are someone who is struggling, or caring for a loved one with serious mental illness, please feel free to use the letter below as a template for your own MP. With permission, I am sharing the draft with you.
One of the most powerful ways carers can have their voices heard is by speaking out together — loudly, collectively, and at the same time. Change only happens when those in power can no longer ignore the voices of the people living this reality every day.
YOUR NAME
YOUR ADDRESS
Your phone number and email address
NAME OF YOUR MP
House of Commons
London SW1A 0AA DATE
Dear …....
We are asking for one thing: a meeting with Baroness Merron, Under Secretary of State for Mental Health.
We are carers. We support people with severe mental illness - bright, intelligent individuals who have been stripped of their dignity and their human rights by a system that condemns them to have no prospect of a life. Which means neither do we.
We are told repeatedly that lessons will be learned. They are not. The same tragedies are repeated time and again. The real danger now is that we sleepwalk into the same coercive system with minor tweaks and tassels. Mental health reforms are happening. We need to be part of that conversation.
What the system ignores
None of these gaps appear in the Government’s response to the Health & Social Care Committee’s recommendations 2026. They affect every carer of someone with mental illness.
Legal rights that exist but are never enforced:
• Section 117 aftercare - our loved ones are often discharged with no meaningful plan in place, all too often excluding carers and families. Sometimes no plan at all.
• Nearest Relative rights - families are routinely side-lined during admissions. The law gives us rights. Services ignore them, using consent as an excuse to hide behind.
• Independent mental health advocates (IMHAs) - patients are rarely told this right exists.
Carer support that is crucial to every carer:
• Carer’s assessments - we are entitled to one by law. Most of us have never had one and when we do, we are told there is no funding for what we need to support us.
• Financial support - many of us have given up work to care. Carer’s Allowance is £83.30 a week. 1.2 million carers currently live in relative poverty, but according to estimates from Carers UK, save the government £184 billion through unpaid caring.
• Our own health - carer burnout is not tracked, not treated, and not counted or prioritised.
• Emergency planning - if we fall ill, emergency back-up is limited.
System failures that can put lives at risk:
• Community Treatment Orders - placed on our loved ones with no assessment of the burden on us as carers.
• Family exclusion from serious incident reviews - reports focus on individual weaknesses: “not engaging”, “refusing medication”, “wasting resources” - never on dangerous, inadequate systems and provision. Families who dare to speak out are judged for it.
• Crisis support - there is no carer crisis line. No one to call at 3am. No one to come out when risks escalate and our loved ones are unsafe, as are the carers left holding that risk.
• Housing - not mentioned enough in care plans. A direct barrier to recovery. Secure housing is as important as medication.
• Ethnic minority carers and cultural differences within mental illness - no translated materials, no data, no tailored support. They are unseen.
• In-patient named nurse allocation can often exist in name only. A tick-box exercise, not meaningful engagement.
What we are asking you to do
• Request a meeting with Baroness Merron on our behalf.
• Raise these gaps in Parliament.
• Push for carers to be included, not consulted after the fact. The new Modern Service Framework for severe mental illness has a black hole where carers’ voices should be.
• Dedicated ring-fenced funding for Carer’s Assessments.
• Health & Social Care Committee’s recommendations to government request an independent Mental Health Commissioner to which government have said no. The PHSO cannot force the NHS to act on its findings and is stretched to capacity. The CQC cannot review individual clinical decisions. NHS Complaints Standards are not mandatory. This is oversight in name only. We advocate strongly for this decision to be reviewed.
Reforms we support and some suggested solutions
• Collaboration with third sector organisations already filling the gaps NHS services leave behind.
• Collaboration with carers and people with lived experience of what it’s like to have a loved one with enduring mental ill-health – people who are keen to help with making the changes that are required.
• More emphasis on recruiting clinical psychologists, therapists and specialist mental health nurses.
• Consistent policies across all Trusts, including private providers who hold approximately 28% of all NHS mental health bed capacity. This should not be a postcode lottery.
• A move to compassionate, person centred, Human Rights based care, as recommended by the World Health Organisation & The Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights.
• Legal protection for people with serious mental illness, not just those under the MHA. Make SMI a protected category.
There are many families across the country navigating these situations with skill, care and love. There are also practitioners who are beacons of hope. We are not here to condemn individuals - we are here to demand a system that deserves them.
Other families are writing to their MPs today.
Yours sincerely,
Your name
MY STORY
Add your own story if you’d like to.
