Shoulder to Shoulder by With-you

Send us Fan Mail For the next few weeks we're going right back to where Shoulder to Shoulder began over two years ago, revisiting the first six episodes of the podcast and the conversations that helped shape the series. These early episodes introduced us to people speaking honestly about lived experience, mental health, recovery, and what peer support really looks like in everyday life. Liste...

Send us Fan Mail For the next few weeks we’re going right back to where Shoulder to Shoulder began over two years ago, revisiting the first six episodes of the podcast and the conversations that helped shape the series.  These early episodes introduced us to people with powerful lived experience, honest reflections on mental health, and a deep belief in the value of peer support.  Listening back n...

Send us Fan Mail In this honest and thoughtful episode of Shoulder to Shoulder, Cate speaks with Ciara, a peer support leader, trainer and activist from Ireland, whose own experience of trauma, distress and trying to find the right support has shaped the way she now works with others.  Ciara manages Solace Café in Dublin, an out-of-hours crisis prevention service built around lived experience, con...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode of Shoulder to Shoulder, Cate speaks with Charlie, a peer support worker in an NHS community mental health team, a trainee therapist, and the founder of a growing sober community in Shrewsbury, whose own recovery has shaped the way she now shows up for other people.  Charlie speaks openly about a childhood marked by trauma, anxiety, and feeling responsible for ever...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode of Shoulder to Shoulder, Cate meets Duncan, who works at Capital in West Sussex, a long-standing, lived-experience-led organisation that has spent nearly 30 years championing peer support, shaping services, and ensuring people’s voices are heard.  Duncan brings his own lived experience to the work, having come through psychotic depression and support that, in his w...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode of Shoulder to Shoulder, Cate speaks with Naomi Salisbury, whose relationship with peer support has spanned decades, both as someone living with mental health challenges and as a leader working to build better support for others.  From advocacy and helpline work to leading a lived experience-led charity, Naomi has spent years at the heart of peer support spaces, es...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode of Shoulder to Shoulder , Cate is joined by Emma Bamber, co-lead of Cafe Laziz, a peer-led community space supporting asylum seekers and refugees in St Helens. Café Laziz welcomes people who are socially isolated, traumatised, and living with long-term uncertainty, many of whom are survivors of war, displacement, and dangerous journeys. What they find there isn’t a...

Send us Fan Mail At 19, Michael was living with psychosis - hearing voices, seeing things other people couldn’t, and trying to hold himself together while training as a nurse. In this episode, he takes us right into the moment it all collided: on a hospital ward, caring for someone who couldn’t move or speak, while the voices in his head were telling him to end his life. It was the night he lost n...

Send us Fan Mail In this deeply honest episode of Shoulder to Shoulder , Cate is joined by Louise Nix , who reflects on the first moments of peer connection, how they helped her begin to heal, and how they led her into peer support roles. Louise shares her story of growing up with domestic abuse, to surviving an abusive relationship, to reaching a point of despair where life felt unbearable.  She...

Send us Fan Mail Dr Justin S. Bell is a community psychologist based in the US whose work sits in the intersection between lived experience, research, and system design. Justin studies how those in lived-experience roles are recruited, trained, supported, and too often, undervalued. In this conversation, Justin talks to Cate about what first drew him to his work and why the working conditions for...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode of Shoulder to Shoulder , Cate is joined by Hansa Raja, founder of Holding Space - a peer-led mental health support service created by and for parents. Hansa’s journey into peer support began when her child experienced serious mental health challenges, at a time when she was also navigating divorce, exhaustion, and fear.  Like many Parent Carers, Hansa felt blamed...

Send us Fan Mail Alex was first hospitalised at 16 - and spent much of the next eight years in and out of the same psychiatric unit. By the time she was discharged at 24, she was labelled “clinically recovered” but inside, she felt empty, hopeless, and lost. In this conversation, Alex talks honestly to Cate about the harm she experienced in mental health services, the limits of being treated throu...

Send us Fan Mail What happens when a car accident stops life in its tracks — leaving you facing pain, uncertainty, and a future you never imagined? In this powerful episode of Shoulder to Shoulder, Cate speaks with José Argudo — husband, new dad, volunteer, and trauma survivor. Just two weeks into a new job, having recently moved house and with a baby on the way, José’s life changed overnight when...

Send us Fan Mail Debbie brings a rare mix of lived experience, professional insight, and deep empathy to the world of suicide prevention. She became a carer at a time when support was scarce, patchy, and hard to navigate — and those early years shaped her determination to make sure other families aren’t left alone in the dark. In this conversation, Debbie talks about the emotional reality of carin...

Send us Fan Mail Fiona Lobban has spent her life at the intersection of mental health, research, and lived experience. Growing up in the North East, she applied to Oxford “almost on a whim” — and walked straight into a culture shock that left her struggling, isolated, and without support. Her own mental health collapsed during her degree, and she later spent a year working in a drug rehabilitation...

Send us Fan Mail Louise Christie leads the Scottish Recovery Network and has spent over a decade shifting power from systems to people with lived experience. She came into mental health from housing, regeneration and social enterprise — an outsider who saw how medicalised services miss what people actually need. We talk family and identity, and the moment peer support moved from theory to practice...

Send us Fan Mail Claire Kendall has spent three decades at the BBC and watched the job shift from fast hits to long, immersive reporting. The stories go deeper. So does the emotional load. When she saw that weight landing on reporters — and on the people they film — Claire helped build a peer support network that now counts 300 trained volunteers across the organisation. In this conversation we ta...

Send us Fan Mail When Rob lost his arm in a motorbike crash — and was left fighting to save his leg and shoulder — and Cat nearly lost her leg while out running, neither imagined their recoveries would become intertwined. In this moving episode of Shoulder to Shoulder, Cate speaks with Rob Hope and Cat Neill, two survivors of catastrophic injury whose lives were transformed by the power of peer su...

Send us Fan Mail What happens when your life changes in an instant — and nothing feels familiar anymore? In this moving episode of Shoulder to Shoulder, Cate speaks with Emily Sole, a trade union professional, trainer, and peer support volunteer, about her ongoing recovery following a catastrophic head-on collision in early 2024. Left with life-threatening injuries and facing a long, uncertain roa...

Send us Fan Mail What happens when a single moment changes everything — your body, your identity, your future? In this moving episode of Shoulder to Shoulder, Cate speaks with Ryiah Beesley-Gibson — a mental health practitioner, trauma survivor, and now a passionate peer supporter. Just weeks before starting a new job in crisis mental health care, Ryiah sustained a catastrophic hip injury while tr...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode of Shoulder to Shoulder, Cate speaks with Ian Smith, a former Rugby Super League referee turned mental health advocate with the charity State of Mind Sport. After officiating over 300 professional matches, Ian’s unexpected exit from the sport led to a personal mental health crisis and a deep loss of identity. In this honest and powerful conversation, he shares how...

Send us Fan Mail What does it mean to become a carer — and how does it change the course of your life? In this powerful episode of Shoulder to Shoulder, Cate speaks with Matthew McKenzie, a carer, poet, author, and nationally recognised advocate for unpaid carers. Drawing from his personal experiences caring for his mother (diagnosed with schizoaffective psychosis) and his two autistic brothers, M...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode of Shoulder to Shoulder, Cate speaks with Georgie Lazzari — Peer Support Development Worker at Derbyshire Healthcare — whose inspiring career shift from marketing into mental health shows how lived experience can drive real, lasting change. Since receiving peer support herself, leaving her job in marketing and then joining Derbyshire Healthcare as a Peer Support Wo...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode of Shoulder to Shoulder, Cate speaks with Matt - a Peer supporter and Assistant occupational therapist in Hertfordshire’s mental health crisis team. After nearly two decades working in the water industry, Matt made a bold career change following his own experience of living with OCD. He shares what that transition was like, how his diagnosis shaped his outlook, and...

Send us Fan Mail What does it mean to bring lived experience into the heart of public services — not just as a voice, but as a driver of real change? In this episode of Shoulder to Shoulder, Cate speaks with Pete Fleischmann, Director of Co-production Works, who shares how his own experience of mental health challenges — and disillusionment with traditional psychiatric care — led him to champion c...