"Lived experience involvement helps us identify areas for improvement that are not always recognised by professionals and staff. In my work as a nurse, involving service users in clinical pathway redesign helped us spot duplication and inefficiencies we were previously unaware of. As the people most involved in their own care, service users keep track of team involvement, medications, and treatments, and provide valuable insight into how the system functions as a whole."

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Hailey Blanchard, Consultant

"Through my work at The PSC, I supported residents and staff in a secure inpatient mental health ward to choose and design their own improvements to make the ward a better place to live. We convened a small lived experience team consisting of 4 residents and 4 staff members to work together. One idea, which wasn't in anybody's mind at the start of the work, was to reduce noise on the ward. The team identified where and when noise was most disturbing and implemented simple, but very effective, measures to reduce it. Without the lived experience of individuals, this hugely impactful issue would have gone unnoticed. "

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Chris Bradley, Senior Partner

"I recently led a project redesigning the Learning Disability and Autism pathway for an ICS in the East of England. Incorporating the views of service users, particularly parents of children and young people navigating the system, was critical to ensuring the resulting pathway met their needs and avoided the biggest barriers to high quality delivery. As our health and care landscape becomes more complex and more integrated, impactful tools and skills to do LEI well have never been more critical and I think it's important for everyone in the sector to be curious about the LEI opportunities in their work. "

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Eli Bond, Associate Partner

"To help a homelessness charity evaluate the safety of women in their services, I held art-based focus groups with women living in the services. The participants' artwork and quotes provided tangible evidence to support policy recommendations - and the women suggested new and service-specific recommendations which desk research had not identified. Several participants also expressed how being involved in service design process made them feel empowered and boosted their self-esteem. "

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Saoirse Osborne, Associate Consultant

"Over the last 3 years at The PSC, we've been increasingly incorporating lived experience involvement into the leadership and governance of major programmes of work. It's an ongoing journey of reciprocal discovery, and we haven't always got everything right. But this involvement has enriched our company's understanding of inclusion, and encouraged us to question in a more self-reflexive way the roles we might play in perpetuating societal & structural power imbalances. Personally, I've made some very memorable and lasting relationships, and enjoyed several vigorous yet mutually respectful debates that have broadened my horizons on what it means to work in a patient-centric way. "

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Harris Lorie, Associate Partner