Learning about Lived Experience

Prepping for a successful Peer Research session.

Earlier in the year, we interviewed Justlife’s Lived Experience Lead and Research and Policy Coordinator Alex Procter, about the importance of giving a voice to those with lived experience. Why is it so vital? Integrating the perspectives and expertise of those who have lived experience (of homelessness in the case of Justlife's work) challenges helps us, the workers, better understand and adapt our practice accordingly.

It’s a fascinating conversation which you can find here in podcast form! As part of a new project, we present wisdom from Alex, Jules, and (occasionally) myself as part of a series of blog articles hosted exclusively on the Practice Networks website. 

Want to learn the fundamentals of research? Think of a question… and think outside of the box!

Integrating Experience

Alex’s main focus is embedding best practice, collaboration and allyship-focused lived experience collaboration across Justlife. This includes integrating lived experience into their research and policy team - you can read more about this work here. Justlife’s ultimate goal is to guarantee that every Emergency and Temporary Accommodation stay is as short, safe and healthy as possible for those experiencing homelessness, incorporating tremendous national work to complement Justlife’s client-facing goals.

Alex highlights the importance of rehumanising systems and creating safe spaces for clients and workers with lived experience; how do we do that? Alex’s role was born out of the need to broaden the intersectionality in Justlife’s research and service delivery and to hear from people currently experiencing the system themselves. The goal is ultimately to ensure that the voice of people with lived experience is included in the design of research and services.

Alex’s role is new at Justlife – proof of the changing landscape, and eagerness for new ideas in the support sector – and other social care and public health sectors. Justlife’s modest size lends itself to agility, and an opportunity to try something new.

Respect, safety, transparency, accessibility and support.

Digging Deeper

Early research in the Research, Policy and Communications team proved that there wasn’t much in terms of intersectionality: ethnic and religious backgrounds, sexuality, disability and neurodivergence. Certain segments of the population, it turns out, are overrepresented in homelessness.

Certain sectors of the population, it turns out, are overrepresented in homelessness.

There were significant gaps in feedback from Justlife’s client base; it’s an age-old problem in the support sector: how do you quantify the good work frontline workers are doing? Traditional methods of spreadsheets and tick boxes were excluding the very people so many countless charitable organisations have set out to help.

So much of the first-hand experience of homelessness, and indeed, Temporary Accommodation can only be understood so much by Justlife’s client-facing work, such as the HEW (Health Engagement Work) team. Of course, there are logistical hurdles in attaining such expertise by experience in a feasible, concrete ethical manner. Handling the situation delicately and treating our clients with respect is paramount. Yet Alex has found that facilitating innovative Peer Research sessions has manifested an emboldening power balance and an opportunity for clients to receive appropriate recompense.

“Figuring stuff out”

New Thinking

Justlife has since, as an organisation, been driven to evolve and adapt: a new EDI (Ethnicity, Diversity and Inclusion) survey and report can be requested from the organisation, and Peer Research has evolved thanks to the hard work of the research and policy team in collaboration with the peer researchers being trained on the programme.  The organisation was born out of an ambition to investigate and improve, and lived experience, or Expertise by Experience, as it’s also known, is proving to be a vital new arrow in its quiver. 

The establishment of Peer Research is simultaneously reactive and proactive and mirrors the work of Brighton and Hove Common Ambition, the Social Connections Project and other peer-led initiatives – direct inquiries as to how and why we, as a society, interface with homelessness. 

“Before we're even talking to people who use our services, or people external, it's about seeing where the staff are at with this concept of lived experience and how it's held in the organisation.” – Alex Procter

Alex shows Justlifers what she’s been working on.

Living by Example

Of course, it’s not just about lived experience, it’s about lived experience leadership too, and by actioning interviews, surveys and collaboration, Alex has been able to establish healthier connections at every stage of Justlife’s work. It’s inspiring stuff. In our conversation, we identified that ‘lived experience’ was harnessing the accumulated knowledge of a topic to improve it, in a non-tokenistic way; listening to those voices who have experienced a system that may have let them down, while generating solutions for those systems and upskilling those sharing their insights along the way.

In later episodes of the podcast, we look in more detail at trauma and its impact – it’s a traumatic thing to experience the ‘housing pathway’ and the services aren’t always catered to the people who need them. As Alex describes lived experience, “It's about what happens to you and what you perceive and what you experience in life,” and that definition is key. And the danger of a lack of such fundamentals is, of course, a dehumanising space for clients.

“This talk of lived experience, we’re just talking about rehumanising a space that’s been dehumanised.”

And it’s not from ill intent – what frontline workers do is hard.

Justlife staff learning the fundamentals of Peer Research.

Words to Live By

The intensity of the work for the people working in the sector isn't a secret anymore and at times can create an 'us and them' mentality., and lived experience work is trying to redress such balance. How do we bridge the gap? Alex champions a person-centred approach (meeting people on their terms – ‘letting them steer’, as our colleague Nathan puts it) What does each person want from their involvement in Justlife? Of course, someone’s identity is so much more than their lived experience; a professional relationship with a client can leave us disassociated from the people we’re trying to help.

Common Ambition is, simply, a trauma-informed co-production project that champions systems improvement. And if you’d like to know more about that, contact my colleague Jules Grenville.

As she, Common Ambition’s Participation Lead, says, it’s taken years to develop appropriate safeguarding processes. “One piece of advice that I would give anyone who wants to engage or work alongside people with lived experience, is to be kind to yourself as well,” Jules shares. “It's not easy.” It’s taken trial and error, of course, but the finished product is potent, and readily accessible on Common Ambition’s website if you’d like to explore more yourself. We often speak of the issues and ethics of client-based work on the podcast; the purpose of Changing Futures and the Practice Networks is to champion cohesion.

Collaboration fuelling co-production!

Better Together

You’re not alone, and your work can develop by being connected and learning from each other, and the learning from Changing Futures Sussex – we’ve seen that firsthand in the feedback and success stories we hear from our network… from your network, too. Transparency is key – with the people you’re working with, about your limitations. “If you’re working on research that’s informed by lived experience, you are talking about systems of oppression; systems that have potentially caused trauma,” says Alex.

Systems that are archaic, hard and slow to change. 

Both workers champion reflective practice – I concur. If that’s something you don’t have, then look no further than Renee Dickinson. Discussing what makes this line of work easier, Alex adds, “It’s to have a network of people supporting each other, lifting each other, and sharing good practice across the sector.” And if that’s not the exact purpose of the Practice Networks too, I don’t know what is!

“We want to be softer. We want to be kinder. And there has been a drive towards that, and I hope that it will continue.” – Alex Procter

In Jules’ words, be careful, be gentle, be kind. A design for life that permeates the support sector. Here, here. If you’d like to know more about anything mentioned in this blog post, please do email me at kate@justlife.org.uk, and I can forward your questions to Alex and Jules, experts themselves.

SEE ALSO:

Justlife: read more about our organisation-wide Lived Experience Approach - link

Justlife: How to Set Up a Peer Research Group manual – link

Justlife’s Brighton Social Connections Project – link

Brighton & Hove Common Ambition – link

Further reading: The Government’s Lived Experience in Policy Making Guide – link