Using Personal Experiences to Improve Human Services

A new report from the Cen­ter for Behav­ioral Design and Social Jus­tice exam­ines the ben­e­fits of includ­ing peo­ple with social ser­vice sys­tems expe­ri­ence in design­ing, imple­ment­ing and eval­u­at­ing poli­cies and programs.

Fund­ed by the Annie E. Casey Foun­da­tion, the report, Experts by Expe­ri­ence: How Engag­ing Peo­ple With Lived Expe­ri­ence Can Improve Social Ser­vices, high­lights the role of ​“inter­sec­tion­al pro­fes­sion­als” — indi­vid­u­als who have both per­son­al and pro­fes­sion­al expe­ri­ence with the child wel­fare, juve­nile jus­tice and oth­er human ser­vice systems.

“Experts by Expe­ri­ence ele­vates the impor­tance of engag­ing com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers and pro­fes­sion­als who have been affect­ed by the pro­grams and sys­tems that pol­i­cy­mak­ers seek to trans­form,” says Sol Espinoza, a senior asso­ciate in Casey’s Evi­dence-Based Prac­tice Group.

Per­son­al Expe­ri­ences of Pro­grams and Policies

The move­ment toward employ­ing pro­fes­sion­als with per­son­al expe­ri­ences with sys­tems is root­ed in both moral argu­ments and prac­ti­cal considerations:

• Includ­ing com­mu­ni­ty voic­es leads to equity.
• User feed­back is a basic prin­ci­ple of improv­ing any prod­uct or service.

“Our take­aways from this paper are straight­for­ward: When you bring per­son­al expe­ri­ence into pro­gram design, out­comes improve; and doing that work cor­rect­ly requires shifts in mind­sets, pow­er and resources,” says the paper’s authors Antho­ny Bar­rows, founder of the Cen­ter for Behav­ioral Design and Social Jus­tice, and Kalila Jack­son-Spiek­er in the report sum­ma­ry. ​“We hope this paper is a help­ful guide for any­one inter­est­ed in begin­ning or expand­ing their own efforts to let the voic­es of affect­ed com­mu­ni­ties lead their work.”

The report’s find­ings about engag­ing with peo­ple with per­son­al expe­ri­ence include:

• Ser­vice providers improved their knowl­edge of — and empa­thy for — pro­gram par­tic­i­pants, which are cru­cial for design­ing bet­ter services.
• Com­mu­ni­ty influ­ence on deci­sion-mak­ing increased, and net­works advo­cat­ing on behalf of the pop­u­la­tions they rep­re­sent grew stronger.
• Shared design of ser­vices increased the qual­i­ty and effi­cien­cy of pro­grams in such areas as com­mu­ni­ty men­tal health and sub­stance abuse treatment.

How to Bet­ter Include Per­son­al Expe­ri­ence in Design and Implementation

Experts by Expe­ri­ence pro­pos­es ways to help researchers and prac­ti­tion­ers bet­ter under­stand the dynam­ics of engag­ing peo­ple with per­son­al expe­ri­ence in pro­gram and pol­i­cy design. The report’s calls to action include:

• Con­duct new research. Engag­ing peo­ple with per­son­al expe­ri­ence, a top­ic of increas­ing inter­est across the social sci­ences, pro­vides an oppor­tu­ni­ty for researchers to devel­op new lines of inquiry on the effi­ca­cy of such engage­ment in the devel­op­ment and deliv­ery of human services.
• Cre­ate inno­v­a­tive research meth­ods. Cur­rent meth­ods are not ade­quate to mea­sure such out­comes as the amount of authen­tic engage­ment. Find­ing new ways to mea­sure out­comes that are impor­tant to com­mu­ni­ties also requires new techniques.
• Grow the pool of inter­sec­tion­al pro­fes­sion­als in social ser­vices. Employ­ing inter­sec­tion­al pro­fes­sion­als, par­tic­u­lar­ly in lead­er­ship posi­tions, requires orga­ni­za­tions to rec­og­nize lived expe­ri­ence as exper­tise, and to invest resources and facil­i­tate pow­er-shar­ing accordingly.

Bar­rows notes, ​“This paper is an impor­tant next step in try­ing to shape our under­stand­ing of where per­son­al expe­ri­ence can make the biggest difference.”

Watch: First-hand expe­ri­ences show what is and isn’t work­ing in youth probation