Transcript: Creating mutually beneficial partnerships in lived work.

Yasmin, Lived Experience Network Consultant
My role has very much been about supporting the group and listening to the group and helping them shape what we are doing. What I've realized is that there is so many opportunities for them to have a voice and to contribute. In addition to the co-design skill development that we did, we've offered training to the system advisors, a range of different sort of certificates and courses that they've been able to participate in.

And DHS were really clear from the outset that they wanted the system advisers to get something out of it so that there was, you know, skill development and training in the process. But I think that formal training, while it's really valuable, there's so much growth that has happened, I guess, organically over time and just creating opportunities for the families to talk with one another and have people come and consult with them and ask them questions and have discussion.

It's allowed them to grow as people and develop confidence and skills that they always had, but that they've really been able to and to shine in that space. And yeah, I definitely hear that from them, that they talk a lot about their self-confidence and their self-esteem and the impact that being involved has had. So I think that's, you know, a wonderful outcome.

Mel, Lived Experience Network Consultant
And I think what I loved watching, even when we were on Zoom, was that peer support that they were offering each other, you know, that they were, you know, connecting with each other between sessions and building a real sense of, you know, strength and confidence together.

Chloe, Lived Experience Network
Doing this somehow in to conferences and having video interviews. So it's something that. I tell my family about and they go, are you serious you're doing that. Yes, I'm doing that.

Wei, Lived Experience Network
Yeah, definitely can't deny that. It feels like personally I’ve have grown so much like believing in my confidence, looking from a unfortunately, violence relationship. But now I feel as though I’m growing much more confident person. I see myself as a person valued and within the group because everyone has been so supportive. If I have a bad day people aren’t going to say you should work harder.

Instead of that, people say, is okay because everyone has bad days and good days and I will support because we all have really been living from this. It's so many different ways. I do feel we've grown together as a group.

Chloe, Lived Experience Network
So we got to take part in an actual photo shoot for which is going to go on the ASK website. And we then got to also keep all of the photos as well. So now I have photos, professional photos of my family that I have never been able to get before, and it didn't cost us anything. A lot of people who are full time parents or full time carers they don't get access to go out and do training or one day training because who who's going to look after their kids.

Wei, Lived Experience Network
Whereas Yasmin provides a free creche for them to have the kids with them while they do the training and then they've got certificates that they can, I guess you can keep them forever and they can go on your resume and it's just, yeah, leads onto all sorts of other things.

Jasmine, Lived Experience Network
I think personally this has given me a lot more confidence.

Shelly, Lived Experience Network
I think it has shifted to how I felt about the experience that we've been through. Yes, it was a crappy experience, but at the end of the day, when you can look back on it and look back at what changes you can make because of what you went through and to to look at it objectively and kind of go, Yeah, that was really crap.

But at the same time I have the confidence to speak up and say no, that that could have been done better, that should have been done better, and this is how you should have done it. So let's, let's change that so that people in the future, different families don't actually have to experience that same level of trauma that we've experienced.

Jasmine, Lived Experience Network
And the Lived experience network has also helped me connect into other networks that I never would have had the opportunity to do. To be sitting in rooms with CEOs and just have, you know, pretty down to earth conversations with them would never have happened unless I was in this lived experience network. I think the opportunity to build my personal skills is going to help me in the future with my own family, my own community, but also jobs that I apply for, which are going to be in this community sector.

All of this lived experience and all the conversations we've had is actually going to strengthen my personal work skills to be able to support families in ways they need.

Lemy, Lived Experience Network
Now, if I'm looking for a job, I'm happy to say Yasmine, can you be my referee? So by giving all these opportunities, it shows a possibility of so many opportunities in life. It may not be the same path, but still this same path can be a route to different aspects of life.

Mel, Lived Experience Network Consultant
And you talk about and building the skills that they had, but they maybe didn't know they had it. That's a lovely way to put it, because often we we don't know what skills we have because we haven't had a chance to use them. And, you know, and I guess for some of these took in some of the younger members of the lived experience network, it was their first experience really of being in a professional environment and that sort of, you know, influencing policy.

And and so it was my hat's off to them. I just think got a baptism of fire to suddenly be thrust into this position where you're speaking to the executive director in a government department at every level and the system, people have learned from them. And for them to see that impact I just think is is really critical.

And I think, you know, just you've done such a great job at the department has about addressing some of the barriers they might have faced.