Mark Farmer

Mark is a National Advisor (Lived Experience) for the NCCMH Culture of Care programme, drawing on a lifetime of community leadership, advocacy, and personal experience. He has over 30 years’ experience in community and development work and is also a trainer, facilitator, researcher, and a lecturer on a Masters programme — always championing the principle that services should be shaped with, not for, the people who use them.

His commitment to equitable, person-centred care is informed by both professional insight and lived experience as a gay, neurodivergent man and wheelchair user with experience of mental ill health. This perspective drives his determination to create cultures where people feel understood, respected, and supported.

Mark is a dedicated patient advocate and founded one of the UK’s largest peer-led support groups and charities for people with Fibromyalgia. His passion for community voice also led him into public office as a local councillor, where he held lead responsibility for Regeneration, Planning, and Crime & Disorder in a major UK city — experience that deepened his understanding of how systems, environments, and decisions impact people’s lives.

He contributes to national improvement work as a member of the NHS England Quality Committee, helping shape thinking on what good-quality care looks like across the whole of England. His role involves offering oversight, challenge, and lived experience insight to ensure quality initiatives are grounded in the realities of communities.

Mark is also Co-Lead of the NHS England Adult Mental Health Network, where he helps shape national policy and priorities for adult mental health services.  His leadership focuses on identifying emerging needs, strengthening equity and quality across pathways, and ensuring that lived experience insight remains a central part of national decision-making.

Locally, Mark champions patient and carer voice as Chair of the Leicestershire Partnership NHS Trust People’s Council and as their Lead Advisor on the Culture of Care programme.

Throughout his work, Mark is committed to ensuring that people with lived experience are valued as true, equal partners in shaping and leading care.