What is lived experience voice?
Lived experience refers to the personal knowledge an individual gains through direct, first-hand experience rather than through others.
Those who engage with our services bring lived and living experience of accessing our programs and we deeply value their expertise.
When service participants have their voices heard and have genuine influence in shaping the services they attend, the outcomes are always better.
- “For me, it’s the ability to raise something and people listen to you.”
- “Having staff listen, understand and help. Just being heard.”
- “Should mean that you’re being listened to and a democratic right to an opinion – and not just yes, we’ll take it on board.”
Our commitment to lived experience voice
Sacred Heart Mission has made a strong commitment in our strategic plan, Strategy 2030, to embedding lived experience voice as a strategic priority and to take the following actions:
- Building and applying a customer-centric mindset.
- Ensuring the voice of service participants is embedded across the organisation.
- Embedding principles of self-determination across all our engagement with First Nations peoples and communities.
- Ensuring service design and delivery facilitates genuine participant choice and control.
Embedding lived experience voice through EAGLE
In 2023, we established the Executive Advisory Group on Lived Experience (EAGLE) with 10 participants who have a lived or living experience of accessing our services. The members are passionate about using their wisdom and experience to make services and systems better for others.
EAGLE plays an important role in decision-making at Sacred Heart Mission and they were actively involved in the development of Strategy 2030 and our Lived Experience Advisory Framework (LEAF).
The LEAF – our roadmap for change
The Lived Experience Advisory Framework (LEAF) provides us with a tool to create positive change in people’s lives by listening, hearing and acting on the voices of people with lived and living experience.
The framework was developed in consultation with EAGLE, Sacred Heart Mission staff and other stakeholders. It is designed with our specific needs in mind, but available for anyone to download and use.
Thank you to all EAGLE members
We gratefully acknowledge each inaugural member of EAGLE for their invaluable contributions:
- Catherine Aloise
- Georgia
- Luke Mason
- Chris Reid
- Lee Jwa
- Gemma Leech
- Jessie Reinshagen
- Tim Morrisby
- Clifford De Gee
- Geoffrey Tevlin
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