Introduction: Across the health sector, there is increasing emphasis on the importance of collaborations with people with lived experience. These are exciting times as we know that health policy, services, research or education led by or done in partnership with people with lived experience leads to more relevant outcomes, more effective use of resources, and a more trustworthy health sector. However, as collaborative approaches grow in importance and popularity, so do tokenistic practices, the co-optation of lived experience expertise, and the reproduction and repackaging of power imbalances.

Provide participants with opportunities to engage critically with scholarship and practice in collaborative models beyond lived experience engagement and involvement. 

The co-facilitators will deliver the aims in three phases.

Phase 1 - Collaboration: Approaches to lived experience engagement and involvement, co-design, co-production, and lived experience leadership will be presented. Participants will map their experiences of collaboration onto a model of power-sharing to explore the power imbalances often faced by people with lived experience.

Phase 2 – Organisational readiness: Participants will be asked to brainstorm and share the resources they would need in their own organisations or settings to help support embedding lived experience leadership.

Phase 3 - Implementation: In groups, participants will discuss strategies to challenge the power imbalances faced by people with lived experience in decision-making and agenda-setting roles. 

 

Participants will be able to;

1) Critique current approaches to ‘involving’ people with lived experience in planning and service delivery, developing policy, conducting and dissemination of research.

2) Understand the differences in power-sharing principles across a range of collaboration modes;

3) Describe the power structures at macro and micro levels of palliative care initiatives;

4) Identify opportunities and strategies to act in allyship with people with lived experience in their own workplace/organisations and community.