LENs works with health and social care organisations that want people with lived experience involved in service review, decision-making, research, workforce development, training and public engagement.
You do not need to know which service you need or have the exact questions worked out. Tell us what is happening in your organisation and we will help define the questions and scope the right service or combination of services.
ways to bring lived experience into your organisation.
Original LENs photography
Find the right form of support
You may need regular insight into people’s experience of a service, informed challenge at a strategic level, feedback on a product, research support, or contributors for an event or training programme. Explore the eight LENs services below. If you are unsure which approach fits, contact us with what you are working on and we will help you work through the options.
Build lived experience into regular service review and improvement activity. LENs Experts by Experience can contribute to service visits, feedback processes and co-productive channels, with monthly insight reports helping your organisation identify themes and consider recommendations.
Bring Experts by Experience into keynotes, panels, chaired discussions and media. LENs works with you before the activity to agree its purpose, shape the contribution and think through what contributors and audiences will need.
A standing advisory board gives Experts by Experience a regular place to test ideas, review emerging themes and contribute to decisions. Meetings with senior teams also give the board a way to return to earlier feedback and ask what has happened since.
Test how a product or service feels to use before wider implementation or production. Experts by Experience can comment on usability, dignity, safety, accessibility and how well it fits the setting in which people will use it.
Bring Experts by Experience into your organisation without recruiting them into your own workforce. LENs recruits and employs the Experts by Experience, then places them into an agreed role within your organisation. The service can include role scoping, onboarding, supervision, wellbeing planning, scheduling and administration.
Include lived experience in the design, delivery, analysis or communication of research and evaluation. LENs can support a complete project or contribute to a defined stage through interviews, focus groups, thematic analysis, reporting and presentation of findings.
Involve lived experience earlier in policy, pathway and change-programme decisions. LENs works with organisations to co-design activity and create routes for lived experience to contribute to governance, service redesign and system improvement.
Bring lived experience into the review, development and co-delivery of training. LENs can contribute to training-needs discussions, content review, co-delivery and the appropriate use of lived experience in training design and assessment.
How we begin
A clear scope can grow from a useful first conversation. We will help turn the situation you describe into an agreed piece of work.
Tell us what you are working on. You do not need to know which LENs service you need or have every question worked out beforehand. We will listen, ask questions and help you get to the heart of what your organisation needs to learn or change.
We will work through the questions that need answering and identify the service, or mix of services, that best fits the work. LENs services can be combined where that gives your organisation a better way to reach its aims.
LENs will prepare a written scope setting out what we have understood, the work we recommend, what is included, who will do what and what the work will produce. We will review it with you before anything begins.
LENs will deliver the agreed work and bring the learning back in a form your organisation can use. The exact output depends on the services chosen, but we will agree how findings, feedback or recommendations are shared and what follow-up is needed.
Common questions
If your question is more specific, tell us about the work and we can discuss it directly.
Ask a questionAn Expert by Experience is someone who brings knowledge developed through direct personal experience of health or social care, or through caring for and supporting someone who uses services. Their insight can help organisations understand how policies, environments, products and services are experienced in practice.
The services are designed for organisations working in and alongside health and social care. Contact LENs with a short description of your organisation and project so we can consider whether the work is within scope.
Yes. You do not need to diagnose the solution before contacting us. We can use an initial call to work through the questions, recommend the most suitable service or combination of services, and scope the work with you.
Yes. Research might lead into a strategic workshop, for example, or an event contribution may need session-design support. We can combine services and set out how each part fits together in the written scope.
This page is for organisational enquiries. If you are interested in contributing your lived experience through LENs, visit the Join Us page to learn about expressing an interest.
Start with a conversation
You do not need to decide on a service before contacting us. Tell us what is happening and we will help define the questions, scope the work and identify the right service or combination of services.