Lived experience in the workplace

Lived experience in the workforce refers to people who work in the sector who either:

• have experienced, or are experiencing, family violence or sexual assault
• have experience of using the system, or
• have supported someone close to them directly affected by family violence or sexual assault.

Benefits of lived experience in the workplace

Lived experience is valuable, meaningful and a strength of the sector.

People with lived experience have unique perspectives and bring deep expertise about how to create a more inclusive system that can better respond to the needs of those accessing services.

Benefits for including lived experience in service delivery include:

• positive role models of people with lived experience who are on their recovery journeys
• finding and challenging barriers to accessing services
• positive benefits for clients through peer support (for example, through programs such as iHeal(opens in a new window), where recovery support workers have a lived experience of family violence and come from a range of backgrounds).

Types of roles

People with lived experience may be involved in different ways. For example, someone with lived experience:

• may be working as a practitioner, leader, executive, advisor, researcher, administrator, student or in many other roles (and either disclose or choose not to disclose their lived experience)
• may be hired specifically for a lived experience role
• may be consulted or involved in specific projects, training or upskilling, drawing on their lived experience. For example, this could involve:
  • running focus groups with clients to get feedback
  • staff training
  • helping to evaluate programs
  • one-off engagements such as guest speaking at conferences or events.

In any of these scenarios, it’s important to support people with lived experience through recruitment processes.