The ALLIANCE Knowledge Hub – Learning from lived experience

A library of resources and guides to support delivery of more meaningful engagement with lived experience.

Through our Lived Experience Networks and engagement we understand the importance of sharing our knowledge and working together to share resources, information and guidance and in response to this, the ALLIANCE have launched a Lived Experience Knowledge Hub.

It is a new resource library sharing ideas and learning on best practice engagement. It is our priority to ensure that people’s views and knowledge through their lived experience are listened to and valued and that their voice is at the centre of policy and practice, through meaningful involvement in the decisions that affect them.

The Knowledge Hub is split into five sections – Guidance, Policies, Templates, Research and Reports and External Resources.

The Guidance section has practical tools to help deliver engagement. We have included our ‘Preparing for Engagement Toolkit’, ‘Creating and Supporting a Lived Experience Network Guide’ and our ‘Engagement Communications Guide’ to help plan, deliver and evaluate lived experience engagement programmes and support Lived Experience networks. There are guides to ensure engagement is inclusive and diverse (Engaging with Seldom Heard Communities Toolkit) and tips and tricks for facilitating discussion and hosting accessible online sessions.

The Policies section provides a selection of the ALLIANCE’s policies that can be adapted and implemented to support organisation’s engagement practices. These include our Ethics Policy, Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Policy and our Safeguarding Policy. They promote inclusivity, respect and ethical practices and have been used across our programmes and lived experience networks.

In the Templates section, you can access a variety of customisable templates designed to provide a clear framework for engagement projects, ensuring that lived experience participants have a consistently positive experience. These resources, including our Equality Impact Assessment Template, are a starting point to develop an inclusive approach with the communities identified.

There is a section hosting a range of reports highlighting good practice engagement with lived experience. In this section you can access the ‘More than Equal’ and ‘Seen, Heard, Included’ reports among others. And in the final section, we feature external resources such as guides, reports and networks to support good practice engagement.

We are continually developing new resources to share on the Knowledge Hub so if you are looking for guidance or policy in a specific area, if you need a template for a new area of work you are planning or if you have any useful resources that have supported your lived experience engagement, please get in touch – rachel.cairns@alliance-scotland.org.uk. We want to hear from you.  

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