three ways to share power

by KA McKercher

Projects aren't the only place share power with people with lived/living experience.

If we focus only on projects, we might overlook opportunities to make lasting changes in day-to-day service delivery, leadership, and governance.

So, we can continue our projects and expand our focus to have bigger impact.

Here's a simple framework to help. You can use it with attribution.

three places to share power with lived/living experience - in day-to-day service delivery, in projects and initiatives and in governance and leadership

a few examples 📣

We can think about opportunities for power sharing in:

day-to-day service delivery (e.g., health, social care, education)

• resourcing peer practitioners and community-led alternatives

• doing shared care planning, goal setting or co-writing case notes

• giving choices in appointment locations, sharing what to expect

• re-thinking our role as 'experts'

• giving choices in the service environment (e.g. lower lighting, doors open/closed)

• enabling more control over personal data

projects (e.g., design, research, policy, built environment, evaluation)

• co-facilitating between lived and technical expertise

• doing peer research (see: “Makes you proud to be black eh?”: Reflections on meaningful Indigenous research participation)

• co-presenting findings and projects

• co-creating and co-analysing evaluations

• sharing resources, skills, benefits and risks

governance and leadership (e.g., across projects, organisations, and systems)

• deciding together on strategy, funding, policy, and reform

• ensuring equal representation of lived and technical experience

• challenging ideas about evidence and expertise (see: Evidence for innovation)

... and, in many more ways.

your turn ✍🏼

Sharing power in many ways drives change. What examples have you seen?

Here's a print-out for you 🖨️

a colourful template to identify ways to share power in day-to-day service delivery, projects and initiatives, governance and leadership and in other places/ways

✨ this framework is inspired by:

• the obligations laid out in Standard Two: Partnering with consumers within the Australian National Safety Quality Health Standards (NSQHS)

• my noticing where standalone co-design and co-production projects fall short of impact and how many co-design projects are governed by people without lived experience (or, where there are so few people with lived experience it can be hard to speak up)

• a desire to work trauma-responsively, having choice and control in big and small ways