Gateshead Service User Forum - Cumbria, Northumberland, Tyne and Wear NHS Foundation Trust (CNTW)

Gateshead Service User Forum is supporting people from the Gateshead area who have accessed services run by Cumbria, Northumberland, Tyne and Wear NHS Foundation Trust (CNTW). CNTW is a provider of mental health and disability services in the North of England.

We want service users to come along and, though co-production, help us shape and improve CNTW's services. You are the people with lived experience, experts who can offer invaluable insight needed to make sure things are done right.

We ‘re-launched’ in January 2020, and managed to have three meetings in person before Covid-19 came along. Like everyone else, we tried to find a way to continue to offer some form of provision and consistency. As a result, we held online sessions using Microsoft Teams.

We are working with, not for, CNTW staff. We also hope to be able to support people to find out useful information from a variety of places, such as the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) and Mind. We can help if you want to know how to approach a charity or organisation, or if you are interested in finding out more current information. We will also bring you news of developments within CNTW, and address concerns you have as a service user.

We pride ourselves on making sure we communicate and support you to access the group. For example, if you contact us to ask something and we don’t know, we will keep persevering until we find a connection or a response for you.

We hold our meetings on the second Tuesday of the month, 12:45pm until 2pm at Newcastle Building Society, Trinity Square, Gateshead, NE8 1BF. Please come along if you are a service user of mental health services, have been a service user, are interested in service development or work with service users and feel we can help. 

Our next meetings will be: 

10th February 2026 - Gateshead Parent Carer Forum - Amanda Hunt   

10th March 2026 - ADHD/Divergence UK - Billy Sayer

14th April 2026 - Gateshead Council Learning Skills - Janet Minto

12th May 2026 - Gateshead Foodbank - Diane Kindred