Authentic Voice Deep Dive Workshop: Diversity and Plurality

Authentic Voice: Embedding Lived Experience in Scotland Project

SafeLives, Improvement Service, and Resilience Learning Partnership are working together on Authentic Voice: Embedding Lived Experience in Scotland. The project aims to:

• Support women with experience of gender-based violence and other forms of complex trauma to use their experiences to help shape the pathways to support and service delivery.
• Enable professionals working across a wide range of policy areas to embed survivor voice and lived experience into system and service design processes in a high quality, sustainable and trauma-informed way.
• Help decision-makers to see how meaningful change can be achieved, and compelled to act, through seeing living examples, having access to evidence & hearing diverse voices of people with lived experience.

Deep Dive Workshop Series

This series of events aims to support professionals in Scotland working across a wide range of policy areas to explore the practicalities of embedding survivor voice and lived experience into system and service design processes. The workshops will inform the Authentic Voice project’s longer term ambitions to support professionals to implement survivor created tools and resources in a high quality, trauma-informed way and empowering way. The workshops bring together a range of professionals across different policy agendas to discuss:

• The extent to which their work is currently shaped by people with lived experience of violence against women and girls (VAWG) and trauma;
• The current challenges and barriers to doing this and the tools, support and resource needed to overcome these.
• Key opportunities to work together in a joined-up, person-centred way in the future.

Attendee numbers at the workshops will be limited to ensure stakeholders have the opportunity to participate in discussions and to make the sessions as interactive as possible.

Diversity and Plurality

This workshop will focus on approaches to diversity and plurality in working to embed lived experience of VAWG and trauma. There are some concerns that lived experience work can be tokenistic and avoids exploring the complex issues experienced by survivors. Stakeholders in our project activities have expressed concerns over ensuring diversity and inclusivity, such as the need to initiate engagement with people who may face additional barriers to engaging with co-design processes, including women with multiple and/or complex needs and/or protected characteristics. The workshop will explore what actions, tools and resources would help to mitigate these challenges, and will include case studies highlighting current examples of good practice.

Details of the programme will be available soon.