Engaging people with lived experience: best practice, challenges, and opportunities
- Area of Work:
- Type: Resource

This report from the ALLIANCE explores the conditions required to support people to meaningfully share their lived experience.
There is a growing practice in Scotland to ensure that people’s expertise and knowledge through their lived experience is valued and, and that people’s voices are at the centre of policy and practice through meaningful involvement in decisions which affect them. Yet, this is a culture shift which is still developing, and currently there remain occasions where people are being involved with insufficient time or resources being allocated, and where the scope to influence feels predetermined and somewhat limited to those involved.
If we are to realise the ambition where people are meaningfully able to share their lived experience to influence decisions and actions taken at a policy level, it is essential that we understand what good looks like, what the barriers and enablers are to engaging with people with lived experience, and develop robust evidence about the difference it can make when individuals are active and equal partners in the development of policy and practice.
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