Do you employ someone in a paid Lived Experience role?

Genio and the Housing Agency are conducting research to map all paid Lived Experience roles across Ireland.

If you employ someone in a Lived Experience role, or know someone who does, we would greatly appreciate hearing from you! Lived Experience roles have been proven to be incredibly beneficial to the employee, their colleagues, and the people they support. By mapping these services, we will be better able to build momentum and evidence for lived experience roles, identify gaps in capacity-building, and learn from best practice within Ireland.

What are Lived Experience roles?

Lived Experience roles are those that require the employee to have first-hand experience of the field in which they are working. For example, a Family Support Worker in a mental health service has experience supporting family members with mental health challenges or navigating relevant community resources, while a Migrant Support Worker is a migrant themselves who works with migrants to support their inclusion, community participation, or mental health. People in these roles are ‘experts by experience’. Common job titles for this type of role include Family Support Worker, Migrant Support Worker, Peer Support Worker, Traveller Support Worker, Traveller Health Worker, and Roma Support Worker.

Contact

To be counted in this map, please reach out to Carissa at carissa.dieli@housingagency.ie with the name and location of your organisation, the number (or approximation) of paid Lived Experience employees, and the theme of your organisation (e.g. mental health services, migrant support, disability services, homeless support, family support). Please also indicate if you would be happy to be contacted in case of follow-up questions.

If you have any questions about this research, please do not hesitate to reach out. We will not be asking for any personal information – we just want to include your organisation in our count!

Closing date for receiving information is 11 October 2024.