Tree of lived experience collaboration activity

This activity can support your organisation to explore, reflect and co-create ways of working with lived and living experience partners. It can help you to identify your organisation’s strengths and growth points.

Partnering is an iterative learning process. If you are already including the voices of children, parents and families in your service you can partner with them on this activity. If you are only at the beginning of developing partnerships, you might like to adapt and complete this activity with staff first to help create safe enough and accountable spaces. Once this is done, you can use the activity with new lived experience partners, and revisit it with staff too (if helpful).

This activity was inspired by the Tree of Life in Narrative Practice.

Begin by exploring the parts of a tree that, when combined, make up your ways of working.

Roots = Values

The roots represent the values needed to do this work.

• When we (children, parents and caregivers with lived experience and staff) work together what values are important to us?

Answers might include: children’s, human, and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people’s rights; social justice and equity; diversity and inclusion; respect, care and compassion with a full heart.

Trunk = Attitudes

The trunk represents the attitudes needed to do this work.

• What attitudes do staff need to bring to this work?

Answers might include: a willingness to challenge biases and mental models; believing this work is critical and purposeful; choice and agency.

Branches = Skills

The branches represent the skills needed to do the work.

• What skills do staff need to do this work?

This is usually a detailed section and includes skills of reflection, engaging, communicating and responding. While the focus here is on the skills staff need, it is important to note that children and families are always bringing their own skills to this work, and these skills should not be overlooked.

Leaves = Lived experience partner outcomes

The leaves represent the positive outcomes for lived experience partners.

• How can this work be beneficial for the families and children involved?

Answers might include: children and families being able to make meaning of their adversity in ways that make visible their skills and knowledge; children being able to see their parent(s) not as a struggling victim but someone who is active in creating positive change; permission to talk about the taboo, the tricky and the unsaid; bravery and liberation from a sense of fear; reclaiming dignity.

Fruit = Project outcomes

The fruit represents the results of the project.

• What project outcomes are possible?

Answers might include: to be informed by the voices of children and families; authenticity in our sources of evidence; delivering outcomes that families and children actually need and ask for; to have a workforce informed by lived experience.

Instructions

Step 1

• Invite a group of lived experience partners to meet. Consider people’s diversity, inclusion and access needs.
• Discuss their ideas for each of the parts of the tree (roots, trunk, branches, leaves, fruit).
• Face-to-face is always nice, but you can also do this activity online.
• Record the meeting so you can capture all contributions.
• Is anything missing? Maybe the tree also has flowers, or maybe you need a compost heap of things that are no longer serving you all.
• Does anyone in your group have a child who might be willing to draw you a picture of a tree you could use in the final document? Remember, you need to pay the child for their time with money or a voucher.
• After the meeting, use the recording transcript to create a document of people’s responses and send them to partners for review.
• Ensure everyone is remunerated for their time.

Step 2

• If needed, repeat Step 1 with other groups of lived experience partners. Can you do the activity with partners from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander families? Or families who identify as being from the global majority or as culturally and linguistically diverse? Or families with other specific experiences or knowledges?

Step 3

• If your service engages directly with children, you may like to adapt Step 1 to do the activity with kids.
• When completing this activity with children, consider the participants’ ages, cognitive development and concept understanding, as well as their preferences for how they are engaged.
• Again, ensure participants are remunerated for their time.

Step 4

• Repeat Step 1 with staff in your organisation.

Step 5

• Review the knowledge and ideas you have gathered. Do all the responses align so you can combine the knowledge to create one tree? Or does your garden need to have different trees for different knowledge?
• Are there differences between the views of lived experience partners or staff that you need to examine more closely?
• Has this activity helped you to identify your organisation’s strengths and growth points?
• Make sure you share the final product with everyone who helped you co-create it.
• What steps might you take next to respond to these reflection questions?

Example: Emerging Minds’ tree of lived experience collaboration

All of Emerging Minds’ lived experience partners were invited to an online meeting to undertake the Tree of lived experience collaboration activity. So many partners were interested in being involved that this was done over two sessions to ensure as many people as possible could attend.

Children were not directly included because at the time Emerging Minds had no active child voice projects. So, the focus was on adult partners, including their reflections on child and family perspectives and impacts. The child of one of the partners drew a mango tree (see above) for the activity and was remunerated for his time.

Emerging Minds staff also completed the activity at the annual all of staff workshop.

Staff responses were then shared with the lived experience partners. Because the responses of both partners and staff aligned so well, a joint decision was made to combine all the ideas into a single guiding document.

For an example, read about Emerging Minds’ collaborative Tree of lived experience, created by our Child and Family partners.