LIVED EXPERT HELPS ORGANISATIONS TRANSFORM SERVICES FOR VULNERABLE PEOPLE USING THE POWER OF LIVED EXPERIENCE.
We help commissioners, providers and policy makers integrate lived experience into everything they do, backed by two decades of pioneering expertise in health and justice.
Are support services are failing vulnerable people?
Too many vulnerable people feel like they are falling through the cracks of our public support services. From policy makers to providers, we all know millions are being wasted on support that often makes no lasting difference to people’s lives.
How do we fix a system of service provision that incentivises revenue ahead of quality of care? It starts with listening to the people who matter most.
The system is ignoring the people who need it most.
Everyone agrees on the importance of lived experience. But few organisations apply it properly. When one-third of prisoners won’t reoffend anyway, it’s the two-thirds we need to listen to. But this struggling majority aren’t consulted. Instead, we hand jobs to an easy-to-reach few.
Lived experience should be more than lip service.
The system continues its cycle: services are commissioned, contracts are won, annual reports are published. The ‘lived experience’ box is ticked. But no one stops to ask: is this really working? If we asked the people most in need, their answer would be clear: no. And they would tell us how to make it better.
That’s why we’ve set up Lived Expert.
We know how to fix it.
We’ve been on a 20-year mission to prove the power of lived experience. When Mark set up User Voice, it was the first national charity working in the justice system to be led and staffed by people with lived experience. It’s still the only one.
We innovated a brand new model for designing, delivering and evaluating support services.
We created Councils, elected people in prison and on probation, and set them up in one-fifth of prisons and three-quarters of probation regions, now integrated into the Probation Service. We developed Peer Commissioning, involving prisoners in the procurement of multimillion pound healthcare contracts in a quarter of prisons, now commissioned in all NHS regions. We delivered 100 Peer Research projects with 20,000 participants, now adopted by the Probation Inspectorate in all their thematic and service reviews.
Our success speaks for itself.
We’ve already changed thousands of lives. Let’s change thousands more.
User Voice proved that lived experience can transform support services. It proved that lived experience can change the lives of vulnerable people, for good. We gave a voice to over 250,000 people in prison or on probation. And those voices were heard: our model was adopted by key public institutions, like the Probation Inspectorate and NHS.
We employed 350 people with lived experience, people other organisations wouldn’t employ. A third were our former volunteers. Now you can’t go into a government agency or service provider without seeing our former staff, as employees and trustees. And they have set up their own organisations, like Peer Power, EP:IC, Youth Ink, The Well Communities, TSA Sports & Education and Connections Housing.
We know our blueprint works. So it’s time to take the next step. We want to hand the power of lived experience to all providers and commissioners, in every sector. We want to give the whole system the tools to unlock lasting change.
We CAN help you give A voice to the vulnerable.
Lived Expert helps organisations transform services for vulnerable people using the power of lived experience. We help commissioners, providers and policy makers integrate lived experience into everything they do, backed by two decades of pioneering expertise in health and justice.
WANT TO KNOW MORE?
The TEAM
Mark Johnson MBE
Founder
Mark is a leading social entrepreneur, author and regular commentator on crime, addiction, mental health, neurodiversity and homelessness.
Daniel Hutt
Director
Daniel has worked with Mark for over 15 years, setting up and growing various charities and social enterprises, all led by the people they serve.
Shadd Maruna
non-exec. director
Shadd is Professor of Criminology and a leading international academic, know for his work on ‘desistance’, how and why people stop offending.