Involving and recruiting people with lived experience

This document helps homelessness services to think about how they can recruit and employ people people with lived experience of homelessness.

"Supporting employment and volunteering for people with lived experience" is a quick reference guide to provide some key do's and don'ts and top tips for employers who employ or would like to employ people who have lived experience of homelessness and social exclusion" It was designed in a workshop in July 2024 organised jointly with Expert Citizens.

The audience for the document is leaders and managers or HR managers who are about to start employing people who have lived experience of homelessness, or who want to formalise and scale up their approach.

The document identifies the following benefits of running an effective lived experience employment programme:-

For the employer

• The opportunity for learning and to better understand the experiences of people being supported
• Providing a sense of grounding in the work
• Giving inspiration and a sense of hope
• Finding it rewarding to see others move on and change
• Creating unique connections for people being supported
• Promoting inclusivity and breaking down barriers and stigmas
• Generating different perspectives and opinions
• Bringing authenticity and credibility to the organisation
• Gaining a huge resource of knowledge and wisdom
• Supporting recruitment challenges

And benefits for the employee include:

• Providing an income and a way to transition from welfare benefits
• Having a sense of purpose
• Keeping busy to support their recovery from homelessness
• Being the change - creating a path for others to follow
• Having skills and abilities recognised
• Being a role model
• Increasing and improving social networks
• Aiding career progression

There are tips in the document about what sort of organisational culture will be most likely to support a successful programme of employing people with lived experience of homelessness.

And there are further tips about how the finances for such a programme should work.

The document goes on to outline what kinds of support would be needed to support a programme of employing people with lived experience of homelessness. And also how to manage training and development in this context.

Finally there are lots of useful links to other resources to support people in this endeavour.