Co-facilitation of workshops or training

What is co-facilitation?

Co-facilitation happens when an organisation’s staff member collaborates with a person with lived experience to plan and deliver a workshop or training. The attendees might be families (e.g. participating in a parenting program) or staff (e.g. learning about a topic or how to deliver an intervention).

Co-facilitating a workshop can take different forms and might involve:

• delivering a predetermined program; or
• developing something new.

The lived experience partner co-facilitating with you might share:

• knowledge (or teach it)
• lived experience ways of seeing, knowing and experiencing the world; and/or
• specific details of their family’s experience to fit the purpose of the workshop.

How you collaborate will be worked out together in your planning meetings and depend on the preferences of the lived experience partner and the purpose of the workshop.

Keep in mind that authentic partnership work takes time. People with lived experience are often managing multiple things at once.

Inviting a co-facilitator

Who you invite to co-facilitate with you will depend on the points above. It will also depend on the purpose of the workshop, and whether you invite:

• a parent or caregiver
• an adult looking back on their childhood
• someone who can and wants to speak about both these stages of life.

The relationship between lived experience partners and staff co-facilitators matters. You don’t need to have known each other for years, but you should be familiar with each other so you can plan the content and co-create safe enough spaces for both the person with lived experience and the attendees. Ways to do this are included in this tip sheet.

Before you invite someone to co-facilitate, ensure you:

• have funding allocated to remunerate and/or reimburse them
• are clear about the purpose of the workshop, who is involved, what you hope the outcome will be
• have considered how they can contribute, and the time commitment and timeline (including time for preparation and checking in afterwards)
• have provided enough information for them to be able to consent to involvement, including if the workshop will be recorded (keep in mind that once something is shared on the internet it is best to assume it cannot be removed, even if you take it down, it may be saved elsewhere out of your control). Use clear language and avoid abbreviations or industry language in your discussions.

Supporting people with lived experience to decide if co-facilitating is right for them

People with lived experience have told us these are useful questions to ask themselves to decide if an opportunity is right for them:

• Is this the right thing for me to do at this time? Am I under stress or in a time of crisis? Or do I already have a lot of family or other commitments?
• Am I at a point in my life where I feel ready to do this?
• Do I have good enough support from family, friends and/or professionals?
• How might being involved impact my family?
• What will I need to talk about in this work, and will this be OK for me?
• What will I do if I realise things are not OK for me?
• Do I have the time to commit to this?
• Do my values align with the work?

Safe enough spaces matter

Co-facilitating workshops can be daunting for anyone. For a person with lived experience there are added complications of:

• power imbalances, which could be between co-facilitators, the attendees, and/or the service system context the workshop is trying to influence
• the impact of directly or indirectly reflecting on the lived experiences of their family and/or children in front of attendees.

Another consideration is that attendees may include others with lived experience – this might be easy to identify if they are in a lived experience designated role or it may not be easy to see (e.g. a social worker who also has lived experience).

Preparing together

Roles, practicalities and content

• Develop a shared understanding of the purpose of the workshop and how lived experience can contribute in a way that is safe enough for co-facilitator as well as the workshop participants.
• Plan together how to follow lived experience wisdom with ideas for actions co-facilitators can take in their work.
• Review any workshop resources, presentations, documents or tools you are drawing from.
• Decide together how the co-facilitator wants to contribute: by weaving their knowledge throughout the workshop, being interviewed, having their own dedicated section or a combination.
• Discuss preferred methods of contact, including if last minute changes have to be made.
• Ensure you have a Plan B in case the co-facilitator is unable to attend for any reason.

Creating a safe enough space

• This is an explicit conversation about what a safe enough space is for the co-facilitator in this context, and includes planning for support before, during and after the workshop.
• Clarify what the co-facilitator is willing to talk about and where their boundaries are. Boundaries may change over time.
• To protect privacy, it is best not to mention names of children, services or schools.
• Clarify how the co-facilitator wants to be referred to (in terms of name, lived experience, affiliations, pronouns).
• Discuss preferences regarding recording the workshop, and if so, what will happen to the recording. If the recording will be put online, where will it go, who can access it and how long will it be available?
• Together, create a safe enough space for participants by opening with a self-care statement, ensuring lived experience is shared thoughtfully and followed by ideas for action so that people feel empowered to respond.

Access needs

• Check in about any access needs the co-facilitator has (e.g. pace of presentation, preferences around questions from attendees, reminders around time, needing to self-regulate, stimm or draw during the presentation).
• Print any presentation material (e.g. running sheets, PowerPoint notes) the co-facilitator needs and dispose of them securely afterwards if printouts contain any personal information.

Structure of the workshop

Opening

Open your workshop respectfully, with safety in mind and with clarity about its limitations.

• Start with an Acknowledgement of Country.
• Include ‘housekeeping’. This is covered before the lived experience recognition to respect the cultural specificity of the Acknowledgment of Country practice.
• Who will say the lived experience recognition?
• Encourage attendees to think about self-care and care for each other. Emotions are OK, attendees will likely have feelings during the workshop, and that is a good thing. Encourage them to reflect on their limits and if something is too much, know where to go for support, and let them know that they can leave at any time.
• Ensure privacy for the person with lived experience. This usually means people can share information and learnings but not identifying information. This is known as the Chatham House Rule.
• Share a statement that one person can’t speak for all families and children, and ask participants to remember that other families will have different stories to share. You might need to explicitly mention if Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander perspectives are missing, while recognising First Nations knowledge as important and point to learning resources.

Lived experience in the workshop

There are lots of ways of incorporating lived experience wisdom in a workshop including weaving knowledge throughout, interviewing and having dedicated sections. This will be determined based on the purpose of the workshop and preferences of the co-facilitator and participants.

You might wish to develop a handout of key messages together based on what the co-facilitator would like the workshop participants to take away and action in their work – you could use our example Parenting with complex trauma handout as a guide.

An idea for sharing lived experience wisdom

Emerging Minds staff have found it useful to structure workshops around the PERCS domains (this is a practice tool for practitioners, but it has been adapted for use in lived experience partnership work). These domains provide a structure that the co-facilitator can not only talk to, but that helps with planning and staying aligned with the purpose of the workshop.

For example:

We know mental illness [as an example – insert context relevant to your workshop] can get in the way of parenting how a person wants to, or even knowing how to parent in the first place. Can you share examples of the impact on:

• the parent-child relationship?
• understanding and responding to children’s emotions and behaviours?
• creating and maintaining family routines, rhythms and rituals?
• communicating and making meaning about what is happening for the family?
• building and sustaining a support network for children outside the family?

You might then go on to explore the following:

• What values do you hold for yourself and your family that you drew on?
• What skills did you use to navigate these challenges (the big and small ways you managed)?
• How can practitioners help families discover their own unique skills?
• Do you have any examples of things services did that helped you navigate [insert context]?
• What was something that really would have helped, that you didn’t get?
• What was something that did or would have helped your kids/parent? (Adapt depending on whether the partner is speaking as a parent or looking back on their childhood.)

An idea for sharing lived experience wisdom

Emerging Minds staff have found it useful to structure workshops around the PERCS domains (this is a practice tool for practitioners, but it has been adapted for use in lived experience partnership work). These domains provide a structure that the co-facilitator can not only talk to, but that helps with planning and staying aligned with the purpose of the workshop.

For example:

We know mental illness [as an example – insert context relevant to your workshop] can get in the way of parenting how a person wants to, or even knowing how to parent in the first place. Can you share examples of the impact on:

• the parent-child relationship?
• understanding and responding to children’s emotions and behaviours?
• creating and maintaining family routines, rhythms and rituals?
• communicating and making meaning about what is happening for the family?
• building and sustaining a support network for children outside the family?

You might then go on to explore the following:

• What values do you hold for yourself and your family that you drew on?
• What skills did you use to navigate these challenges (the big and small ways you managed)?
• How can practitioners help families discover their own unique skills?
• Do you have any examples of things services did that helped you navigate [insert context]?
• What was something that really would have helped, that you didn’t get?
• What was something that did or would have helped your kids/parent? (Adapt depending on whether the partner is speaking as a parent or looking back on their childhood.)

Engaging with the attendees

Mentimeter

Mentimeter can help workshop participants to engage and lived experience to respond in a structured way.

Examples of questions are:

• What are you already doing to support children’s wellbeing in this context (or whatever your topic is)?
• What are some ideas for additional things they could be doing?

The person with lived experience might want to read the responses out as they appear and respond to the ones that resonate with their own reflections and/or ask the attendees to expand on their ideas.

Q&A

Q&A components can be stressful for anyone delivering a workshop. It is good for all those participating to discuss how you will manage Q&As while remembering what people feel OK talking about changes over time. There are lots of options for managing this:

• Don’t have a Q&A section
• Open for questions (verbally in-person and/or in online chat). Staff or lived experience participants can answer depending on the subject, making sure to always leave space for the lived experience co-facilitator to respond if they wish to.
• Ask attendees to submit their questions ahead of time so you can plan your responses.
• Ask attendees to post questions in the chat so that:
• lived experience partners can respond to those they choose to
• you can support partners to write their responses and email afterwards
• you can use the questions to inform a future session.

Following up with feedback

Consider asking attendees to complete a short survey to collect feedback that helps you reflect and improve for next time. They are usually constructive in their feedback, though it is useful to review any feedback before sending through to the lived experience co-facilitator, just in case there is something potentially unhelpful is fed back, which either needs to be shared thoughtfully, or not at all.

Checking in with the lived experience co-facilitator

The day before

• Touch base a day before the workshop to see how they are feeling about it and if there is anything that might get in the way, or anything you can do to support them.
• Be familiar with their self-care or support preferences.
• Log on (or arrive if face-to-face) 30 minutes early to allow for final arrangements and check-ins.

During

• During the workshop, follow the plan you made so participation is safe enough and stick to the scope of your agreed role.

After

• Immediately after, make sure you have some time to check-in with the lived experience co-facilitator to see how they felt it went. You can each share your perspectives.
• Check in about self-care or supports if needed.
• Make sure you thank your co-facilitator for their contribution and organise remuneration and reimbursement of expenses.
• Make sure they know who to contact if they find themselves struggling after the workshop.
• Make time to catch up and reflect a few days or a week later. Explore your learnings together and note what could be done differently/better next time.
• Take time to manage your own self-care and opportunities for reflection if you feel impacted by the session.