How can charity trustees centre lived experience?

Many charities recognise that involving people with lived experience is an essential part of achieving their impact. However, it isn’t always clear where to start or how to meaningfully embed lived experience and fully support those involved. When it comes to governance and decision-making, lived experience involvement can take many forms, depending on a charity’s purpose, activities and structure. In other words, there is no one-size-fits-all approach to involving people with lived experience.

Trustees play a crucial role in creating space for people with lived experience to be a meaningful part of driving impact and bringing about change. First trustees must establish why you want to involve lived experience in governance, what benefits it would bring, and crucially, what is possible for your charity as it stands.

In this free event, run in partnership with Clothworkers Company, and targeted at trustees, we will:

• Explore different approaches to involving people with lived experience in charity governance and decision making
• Consider which factors may be important in determining the best approach for different charities
• Discuss what trustees can do to start involving people with lived experience.

Katie Boswell, Associate Director at NPC, will be chairing the event, and we’ll be joined by speakers from St Basils and Rethink Mental Illness, who will share a variety of experiences and approaches to involving lived experience in governance.

Tamzin Reynolds, National Youth Engagement Manager at St Basils, alongside Abbey Bree and Stephen Chance, members of St Basils’ Youth Voice initiative will join our panel.

St Basils is a leading organisation in youth engagement and is committed to fully involving young people in setting standards, identifying priorities and monitoring services. ‘Youth Voice’ is St Basils’ collective of youth engagement services, that work together to centre the experiences of young people who have experienced homelessness, to support and bring about change in the UK.

Aphra Tulip, Vice-chair of Rethink Mental Illness, brings 15 years of experience working at NHS cancer services, NSPCC and various roles in support work and youth work. Aphra is a carer of family members living with mental illness and has used mental health services for a number of years. She is particularly passionate about using the experiences of people affected by mental illness to develop services.

At Rethink, people with experience of mental illness, and those who care for them, are at the centre of everything they do—shaping expert advice, information and training, and 90 services. They also drive Rethink’s campaigning and help to run over 140 local support groups.