By Matthew McKenzie – Carer

I feel Unpaid carers play a vital role in supporting loved ones experiencing mental health challenges. Much of this caring happens quietly in homes, during sleepless nights, through appointments, advocacy, and everyday acts of protection and support.

For many carers from minority communities, this experiences also includes navigating the cultural understanding, language differences, and systems that sometimes do not always recognise or reflect communities. Despite the knowledge carers hold, I feel our voices can sometimes feel overlooked in those decisions about care.

I recently wrote and recorded a short spoken word poem titled “Nothing About Us Without Us.” This poem reflects a simple and important message: carers bring lived experience that should be included in conversations about mental health services.

The poem is taken from the book I am developing called “Unpaid, Unseen and Yet Unbroken”

Carers are not just supporters in the background. Carers can carry knowledge shaped by lived reality by caring, advocating, and supporting our families through complex systems.

The poem also speaks to the importance of co-production. When carers, communities, and professionals work together, services can become more understanding and culturally responsive, and equitable.

I think this message is especially relevant to ongoing work around the Patient and Carer Race Equality Framework (PCREF), which encourages meaningful involvement of people with lived experience in shaping mental health services.

The poem is a small creative contribution to that conversation. It invites us to reflect on a few simple questions:

• Are carers from different backgrounds being listened to?
• Are those lived experiences shaping services?
• Are decisions being made with carers, not about them?

Listening to carers is not just a gesture of inclusion it can lead to better understanding, stronger partnerships, and better care.

If you would like to watch the poem, you can find the video here:

I hope my poem encourages reflection and conversation about how we can continue building services with communities, and not just for them.