Hello and welcome to Expert Focus.

Before you delve deeper I wanted to let you know a little more about who we are, what we do and how we have made it this far.

Expert Focus began in 2019, and the aim was to a platform for capturing the voice of lived experience which was independent.

There are some good examples of ‘lived experience’ working, but we wanted to build a platform which was able to respond quickly and had the freedom of NOT being a service provider as well. It is hard to separate being a service provider from involvement, my personal experience and that of those who have helped get us this far is that we didn’t feel we could offer a totally open opinion of the care and support we received and almost felt obliged to say nice things even if they were not 100% heartfelt. A bit like the judges judging themselves.

We have shown we can capture the powerful voice of the individual and continue to be challenging enough to try and drive through change.

It was not enough for use to just capture the voice of lived experience in our work, it was also about taking those people on a journey with us if we could. We have tried to support people to come on that journey, encouraging them to speak for themselves in a safe way.

It hasn’t always worked out the way we hoped, but that is always going to be the risk and beauty of doing something which is raw/real. Some of those who have joined, have stayed, other only for a short while and we have even had the pleasure of watching someone move on to full time employment in the sector.

Every one of those have brought their own unique talents and we have taken a little learning from each of them. If it hadn’t been for the amazing Experts by Experience who have been part of this process we would not have made it this far.

Over the past 3 ½ years, we have also been extremely privileged to have partnered with, carried out work for and delivered commissions alongside some brilliant organisations including:

Kings College London
NIHR HSCWRU
Find and Treat
VCHP (Vision Care for Homeless People)
University College London
Housing Associations Charitable Trust
University of Greenwich
The Passage Day Centre
Connections at St. Martins
UCLH Biomedical Research Centre
DHSRU, University of Dundee
University of Edinburgh
FEANTSA
University of Stirling
Neunerhaus, Austria
999 Club
Ace of Clubs in Clapham
Imperial College
University College London Hospitals
Department of Health & Social Care
NHS England
Health Education England

We have been able to make certain that the real voices are heard, and they have added real substance to the reports and the data which we were commissioned to deliver.

We have helped organisations to begin implementing new involvement teams in their work, and also support and encouragement to existing in-house involvement groups.

We have been able to build feedback structures through our personalised focus sessions and designed or co-designed client appropriate research questionnaires on major topics such as Covid-19 vaccination uptake.

We continue to support people with lived experience of homelessness to take part as students on the taster course on Homelessness and Inclusion Health delivered by University College London.

Each year we also support Experts by Experience to co-produce a lecture session as part of that course (the 2023 application for course is available now, including how to apply for one of the three FREE lived experience student places (https://www.ucl.ac.uk/epidemiology-health-care/study/short-courses/homeless-and-inclusion-health)

Expert Focus have delivered lectures and seminars for large number of yet to be qualified health and social care practitioners at various universities.

We have been fortunate to be supported and encouraged by some amazing people along the way (too many to list here) and for that we are forever grateful.

All this means is that now, in 2023, we are in a much stronger place to keep growing, and we are looking forward to meeting new challenges that are ahead of us, continuing to be proud of the platform we are building.

For everyone who has helped us get to the point we are at today, we thank you, and for those who are yet to take the plunge, a warm welcome awaits you.

With best wishes

Stan Burridge
Director.

We are also supported in work by some amazing companies who continually strive to keep us online, looking good, financially secure and legally protected. Please click on a link below to find out more about those companies.

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