Lived Experience (VTQ)

Lived Experience (VTQ) at a Glance

We have been recognised as an endorsed provider from Skills for Care, earning the prestigious distinction as a Centre of Excellence within training and health & social care.

‘Lived experience’ describes people’s first-hand accounts of health and care. How they experience services is often affected by their own personal circumstances, for example, whether they have a family or whether they are in work.

Gathering the views of those that use your services, can help bring issues to life by illustrating the scale of what people are dealing with in their daily lives and the practical challenges they face by enabling them to voice their opinions and identify good practice and areas of concern.

Healthwatch Essex is an independent voice for the people of Essex. They gather and represent people’s views about health and care services in the county to help improve them. Their current training offer reflects the work they do in engaging with local communities, using active and positive listening skills, and the principles of inclusion. They have recently been commissioned to run face-to-face training with local clinical commissioning groups, hospitals, GP representation groups and PALS. This training is now available in a video online format making it accessible to anyone or any organisation, providing participants with the skills they need to collect and represent the voice of whoever they engage with.

Sam one of the Healthwatch Ambassadors wrote when she completed the course:

Oh my goodness, this course was super helpful and so valuable. I learnt so much and the powerful presentation tools and awareness of how to active listen and distractions etc was superb. I was even putting this into play over the weekend, observing others and it's so true how much is ego or pseudo listening takes place and people don't even realise it!

ProTrainings are Skills for Care Endorsed for both our classroom and e-learning courses. This means that our training meets the high standards expected by Skills for Care.

If you engage the public as part of your work in the health and social care sector and would be interested in training, get in touch.

For more information on this and details of using our program in your organisation, please contact us.