Valuing Lived Experience – Learning Report

The project supports those with lived experience to provide coaching and mentoring to those in senior positions in health and care. The coaching allows clients to gain deeper understanding of lived experience perspectives and promotes the confidence to try new approaches to co-production in their own work.

Our hope is that Voices for Improvement will enable people to embed strategic co production and improve healthcare services as a result. 

Valuing Lived Experience – Learning report, and the accompanying Valuing Lived Experience – Summary Report both represent a snapshot of the accumulation of two years’ work and the strength of community behind Voices for Improvement, including The Health Foundation’s Q Community, and the Co-Production Collective at UCL. It brings together learning amassed during Voices for Improvement’s pilot phase, from August 2021 to March 2022. Methods used to generate the evidence for this report include:

• Document analysis.
• Weekly reflective practice.
• Observations of meetings, workshops, and training.
• Interviews with key figures.
• Co-designing, co-delivering and co-analysing pre-and-post interviews. with coaching and mentoring training participants.
• Co-designing and delivering ‘Valuing Lived Experience – Learning with National Voices’, a webinar held on 9 February 2022.

The commitment required for the co-production approach to work is substantial, but it is also not complicated. It’s about building on people’s strengths, a willingness to be flexible and embrace new ways of working, and the recognition that we need to learn together to create real and lasting change. It’s the bravest step we can take right now.

Through Voices for Improvement, National Voices has committed to the work of co-production. This is our journey – we hope Voices for Improvement can set you on yours.