No more engagement. New ways of working.
We are at a tipping point in the suicide prevention sector, when it comes to embedding lived experience. Over the last 10 years we have called for opportunities for people with lived experience to participate in suicide prevention. Then we turned to boosting engagement for people with lived experience in suicide prevention. Now, we need to be aiming for partnerships.
So what do I mean. Well, participation is commonly defined as an act of taking part in an event, activity or anything really. It implies that the participant will be one of many. A member in a group, all doing the thing or working to a common goal. In suicide prevention, a person with lived experience might be invited to attend a public seminar or a round table discussion. The involvement of the person with lived experience is often passive, and the person or organisation who invites participation, retains the control of the terms of the relationship.
Engagement has more complexity. An engagement is simply an agreement to undertake an activity, but it also describes a level of commitment or sense of attachment to that activity. Think of the difference in engagement you might have if you liked vs didn’t like what you were doing. Engagement in a lived experience sense is similar to things we might see under the banner of participation but with a little more investment from the person with lived experience. Opportunities where engagement is the defining relationship are also generally one-way, with decision making control far away from the person with lived experience.
What we should really be striving for, is partnership. With partnership, we describe a relationship of equality, or relative equality. It hints at shared decision making power and also distribution of the benefits of the activity across both parties. From my experience in lived experience roles, partnerships are rare in suicide prevention when it comes to lived experience. Roles that come close to being of a partnership manner, are things like being a board member, drawing on lived experience to drive the strategic direction of an organisation, and equally sharing decision making as well as the benefits and liabilities of the company. Other times, it is when I have done work or advocacy outside an existing organisation, where I can do suicide prevention on my own terms and with full control. Working in this way though, does not help embed meaningful lived experience partnerships within organisations.
So how can we shift from participation to partnership?
Prioritise and invest
I get asked, time and time again, “how can we embed lived experience with our budget stretched so thin?”. The reality of the matter is, we must make lived experience partnerships a priority and make the right investment. Say you make a commitment to change your eating habits and include more fruit in your diet, without changing the total amount you spend on food. The thing you actually have to do is purchase less of something else, if you are to increase the fruit you buy and still remain in budget. The same goes for embedding lived experience in our suicide prevention efforts. We need to rethink our service models and make space (and budget!) available to spend on initiatives that partner with people with lived experience.
Many of you reading this would have come to work in suicide prevention through having a lived experience. How many of you openly acknowledge and draw on this experience in your work? When we are talking partnerships with lived experience, we also need to think internally to how we connect with and draw on our lived experience in practice. Organisations often provide extensive training in things like cultural safety, trauma awareness and policy but do you know any organisation that provides training on how to draw on your lived experience in practice? If you are strapped for cash but want to partner with people with lived experience, look to the people you already partner with and empower them to draw on that experience in their work.
Power redistribution
Discussions about power are a hot topic in suicide prevention and the broader mental health sector, and for good reason. Uneven power dynamics can make suicide prevention work an uncomfortable space for people with lived experience. In their work developing a model of lived experience leadership, LELAN identified the barriers and challenges with lived experience work, particularly:
many positions in LEx leadership are unique in nature and limited in numbers. This intrinsically reduces power and presence within organisations, teams and decision making.
In redistributing power, we must look to build a broad base of people with lived experience and their allies within our organisations. Partnership with one person with lived experience can be an isolating experience for them, and peers can offer a supportive and safe environment. “Lived experience” is not a homogenous group, and therefore having more partners with lived experience broadens the value your organisation experiences.
Re-think what lived experience contributes
For years we have been embedding lived experience for the way that stories can create shared understanding and provide vital advice on how to better develop and implement services. We are really good at looking to lived experience for advice on things we develop in our organisations and for co-designing approaches to suicide prevention. What we are less effective at, is recognising that people with lived experience have experiences beyond their brush with suicide. We have been chatting to people with lived experience and they have been telling us that they combine their lived experience with skills like community building, corporate governance, counselling, research and industry experience. Stigmatising beliefs about the capabilities of people with lived experience, limit the opportunities we offer to partnership with them. We need to re-think what we know about people with lived experience and truly acknowledge them as whole people with varied skills and abilities.
So as we move to partnership models over engagement models, we need to be reflective and communicate our successes and where we fall short of our expectations. I urge you to think critically about your practice and get creative with how lived experience is embedded within your organisation. We can learn so much by connecting with and talking to others navigating this space so please, reach out and start a discussion today.
Some lived experience strategies that might direct true partnership when working with people with lived experience:
