Although this work focuses on Parliamentary processes I hope that there are lessons to support work across the very organisations and institutions that are increasingly drawing on lived experience in their work. I'd be delighted to discuss further with anyone interested in hearing more.

Whilst acknowledging the time pressures that committees face, this report sets out what I think are the key questions to consider when designing approaches and processes to bring people with lived experience into the work of committees.

Alongside examples of good practice I suggest that there needs to be further engagement with the challenges and complexities of doing this work. Ethics, transparency of process and difficult questions of who is deemed to 'have' lived experience are all important to consider.

This work shows that hearing from people with lived experience has a unique role within Parliamentary scrutiny and uses case studies to illustrate the variety of ways that people with lived experience engage with Committees.

I got directions to someone's office that was reminiscent of a quest from Ye Olde Times...I had to find a compass!

And thanks to @oliverescobar.bsky.social for giving really helpful feedback on an early draft and to everyone who attended our symposium at the @socialpolicyuk.bsky.social last year

Your can find the paper here doi.org/10.1332/0305...

We hope that by outlining a governance-driven perspective we offer both terminology and specificity to improve understanding and assist researchers and practitioners to navigate diverse developments in this area.

We argue that this illustrates the ways that policy ‘elites’ are required to design processes that serve specific policy needs and that these needs are often related to organisational norms about producing and using specific forms of evidence.

We explore this in the context of Scottish anti-poverty policy making and show that, while the language of participation and deliberation feature in the rationale, these ideas are squeezed out as institutional needs and norms take precedent.

We find that, although lived experience is often considered as a democracy-driven and campaigning movement that challenges traditional forms of expertise and power, it is also driven by state-led processes of participation and thus could be considered an example of governance-driven democratisation.

We wanted to use some of our previous research to offer some conceptual clarity, critical reflection, and perhaps ‘something useful’ to say about the use of Lived Experience in anti-poverty making (in Scotland).

Hayley and I have been discussing and reflecting on the increased use of the term ‘lived experience’ and the different ways it was being used. We know that there are many people working in and around this space and lots of aspects to be discussed and examined.