Our lived experience team support complex clients that can be hard to reach and a challenge to engage by using their experiences of the criminal justice system and other services. The invaluable dynamic that peer support workers have enhances the service and provides the opportunity for colleagues to better understand the lived experience of our service users and is now embedded across West Yorkshire.
Liaison & Diversion (L&D) works to recruit and train potential volunteers with lived experience through our accredited peer mentor training programme. Volunteers are given the opportunity to enhance their skills and experience to grow within the service and wider sector.
We are constantly looking to improve its peer support package and there are plans for the pathway to grow, with extra training and plans to take on more volunteers and create new paid roles to allow for volunteer progression into paid employment.
The peer support workers and volunteers lead on co-production and lead on shaping service delivery, using their lived experience to ensure that our service works for the benefit of our service users.
Click on the below button to read feedback from a graduate of our peer mentor training programme.
Lived Experience Charter
Our service has recently undertaken and been awarded the Lived Experience Charter – we are proud to announce we have gained the Silver Award for supporting people with lived experience of the criminal justice system into employment. The Lived Experience Charter is led by Career Matters and commissioned by NHS England, Health & Justice.
The Lived Experience Charter has enabled us to:
- Demonstrate our commitment to employing people with lived experience of the criminal justice system;
- Provide opportunities for people with lived experience;
- Increase job roles for people with lived experience;
- Demonstrate that we have implemented the Lived Experience; Charter Values, Standards and Practices.
“The commitment, of Liaison & Diversion to people of lived experience has not only armoured, protected and educated me to crawl kicking and screaming out of my ‘NEURODIVERGENT UNREACHABLE HELL!’ it has given me the knowledge and tools to safely aid myself and others amidst trauma, storms to a life that feels liveable. Life saving medals all round please.
Superhero’s – everyone involved”.
“We are extremely proud to have been awarded the Silver level of the Lived Experience Charter. Service user voice and co-production are golden threads that run through our entire organisation, driven by our ETE and peer support staff and volunteers. This ethos ensures that as a progressive service, we always keep the service user at the forefront of our developments and to have this recognised at such a high level is a great achievement”.
