Lived Experience Lead
At Beam, we believe that lived experience of the difficulties we work with is as important as the clinical experience in the area. This is why we ensure that a lived experience voice is present in all our work.
Our experience is that people who have lived through the difficulties we focus on, have a unique and important perspective that can often be left out of conversations in health care.
Whether it is helping staff to understand behaviour or engaging service-users using a shared experience that staff do not have access to, Beam sees the role of the Lived Experience Practitioner as a core part of our work.
Working at Beam is Hollie Berrigan, Consultant Lived Experience Practitioner and Integrative Counsellor.
Having experienced a range of situations, from voluntary and involuntary treatment, group and individual therapy, generic and specialist care, homelessness, emergency and crises services. This brings Hollie’s perspective added weight due to experiencing the majority of situations that she consults on on top of her clinical knowledge.
Hollie is trained as an Integrative Counsellor and has a BSc in Psychology and Counselling, this adds a theoretical and organisational perspective to her input. Hollie frames her experiences in a way that people can understand and relate to. This combination of experience with insight, eloquence and theoretical underpinning allows it to be heard and adds huge value to all training, clinical and consultancy work.
As well as the above mentioned qualifications, Hollie is also an accredited Peer Support Worker and accredited Hearing Voices Network Facilitator. As part of her freelance work she provides consultancy for other organisations, trains, mentors and provides peer supervision for residents working as Well-Being Navigators in prison settings, as well as speaking at various events and conferences throughout the year, repeatedly being part of award winning teams and projects.
Having trained hundreds of people in the KUF awareness training for Personality Disorder nationally for a range of organisations and organised bespoke events, including her own bespoke trainings for Criminal Justice, Hollie is a well seasoned and gifted facilitator.
Hollie is skilled at in depth risk assessment, complex case formulation and establishing the emotional containment and understanding of the client group required to help people move away from restrictive practice.
Hollie is a member of the Executive Committee of the British and Irish Group for the study of Personality Disorder, a Graduate Member of the British Psychological Society and a member of the Royal College of Psychiatrists Expert Reference Group for Sigma, Labelling and ‘Personality Disorder’.