A Roadmap for Engaging People with Lived Experience of Homelessness 

Phase 1: Ensure Organizational Readiness & Leadership Commitment ( 3-6 months)

 **Are you ready to co-design? **

Areas to address

• Define / Clarify the purpose of the engagement
• Establish specific and achievable goals. 
• Identify who needs buy-in
• Increased public and political will to end homelessness  
• Identify champions of the work
• Determine the scope of the engagement 
• Develop a communication plan 
• Allocate resources/ compensation rubric
• Establish timelines and milestones

Leadership readiness:

• Is leadership across all teams aware of the importance of engaging People with Lived Experience of Homelessness (PWLEH) in the homelessness response system? 
• Leadership Commitment: The success of engaging people with lived experience of homelessness (PWLEH) in the homelessness response system is not just a goal but a commitment to which our leaders are fully dedicated. Their unwavering support provides a sense of security and reassurance to the team.
• Authentic Engagement: Our genuine respect for the lived experience is the cornerstone of this engagement. Is our interaction with PWLEH authentic, free from tokenization, and fostering trust and respect for their experiences?

People with Lived Experience Engagement: 

• What support might be needed before engagement?  (examples: Administrative, childcare,  tech support, mentorship)
• Consider holding meetings during non-traditional times. 
• Consider creating feedback loops where PWLEH can share their opinions without fear of retribution or retaliation. 
• Identify who you want to bring on as a person with lived experience (history person of lived experience needs to have, population of focus)
• Map actors and landscape asset scanning. 

Changing Practice and Culture: 

• Train staff in trauma-informed and culturally sensitive practices, as well as other relevant training. 
• Tools like the Harvard bias test can be used to examine for conscious and unconscious bias, which can help create a more inclusive and equitable engagement process. 
• Safe Space: Are We Creating a Safe Space for Building Relationships and Fostering Trust? This is crucial for ensuring the emotional well-being of PWLEH and encouraging open communication. 
• What is the existing culture? 
• What existing practices, programs, policies, and values keep the organization from changing?
• Are supports in place for team debriefing and processing?
• Constructing a questionnaire from the Theory of Planned Behavior Change to assess for behavioral change. 
• Decision-making mapping: Conduct a decision-making map to pinpoint stages where biases might emerge, significantly affecting the involvement and overall experience of individuals with lived experience (LE).

Tools and Resources to Support Engagement: 

• Compensation of Persons with Lived Expertise Guidance and Policy
• COVID-19 Homeless System Response: Engaging Individuals with Lived Expertise 
• Meaningful Engagement Definition
• Co-creating a change-making culture
• Engaging People with Lived Experience
• Project Implicit 
• Building Community Leadership  and Power to Advance Racial Justice

**Note: Completing each phase will require assessment and regular performance tracking.

The S&E Team will assist in developing an evaluation tool to determine their readiness to proceed to Phase 2 of the roadmap. 

Determine the indicator, assign and set the target ( 80% achievement), and status updates- on track, need improvement, completion, 

Phase 2:   Preparing the Team  and  Planning the type of Engagement (6-9 months)

** Don’t start recruitment without preparing the agency and other stakeholders. The culture piece has to be done first!

Areas to address:

Skill building, education, team preparation, and “professional” development are crucial. Key considerations include identifying the most suitable engagement approach and ensuring pre-engagement infrastructure is in place.

Leadership readiness

When preparing for leadership involvement with individuals with lived experience, consider the following:
1. Leaders are tasked with the critical responsibility of fostering empathy and understanding among their team members. This entails actively engaging in effective listening practices to comprehend and address the needs and concerns of those with lived experience.

2. Provide ongoing training to leaders and teams on issues such as a trauma-informed approach, sensitivity training, power sharing, white cultural norms/ white supremacy,  racism, and its impact on homelessness, unfair housing practices, and lending. 

People with lived experience:

• Identify the best equitable engagement types  & methods of engagement. 
• Considering resources for PWLEH when in active addiction 
• Consider if the place/organization feels emotionally safe for PWLEH, free from re-traumatization and harm. 
• Shared language and definitions. 
• Increase understanding of the target population.

Changing practice and culture:

1. Creating protocols and policies to support equitable engagement. 
2. You may want team members to sign an agreement to uphold policies and principles. 
3. Include the new principles in external and internal communications. 
4. Creating a supportive room with subtle reminders of techniques to facilitate emotional centering. Visual affirmations and reminders. 
5. Clears the path for barriers and challenges  elevated by improvement/implementation teams 

Tools and resources

1. Marketing template to recruit PWLEH 
2. Engagement tool

Phase 3: Identifying & Recruitment/ Onboarding/Orientation

**Do you have trusting relationships with historically underrepresented communities?**

Areas to address:

1. Where will you recruit and seek advice from people with lived experience? 
2. How do you plan on including diverse voices at your table? 
3. Who will assist with the onboarding process? 
4. Allocating resources for marketing materials

Leadership readiness:

When preparing for leadership involvement with individuals with lived experience, consider the following:

1. Your organization has successfully outlined how you will actively seek out, engage, and welcome individuals with lived experiences. The essential infrastructure, including reimbursement, transportation, parking, childcare, and more, is already in place. Furthermore, minimal yet essential documentation, including role expectations, consents, releases, and confidentiality agreements, has been meticulously prepared. Finally, it is crucial to develop and deliver a suitable level of orientation for the initiative.
2. Developing Accountability to and Partnership with Communities of Color
3. Securing Organizational Commitment

People with lived experience:

1. Processes are in place to support the application process for individuals with lived experience (PWLE ).
2. Using non-traditional forms of payment. 
3. Technical assistance, administrative support, transportation, etc.. (embedded into the policies and practice, and contract during onboarding).
4. Understanding the Homelessness Response System: COC 101 Training. 

Changing practice and culture:

1. Human resource personnel is responsible for ensuring that the organization understands the impact of the work and contributions led by PWLEH.  There is targeted training to ensure that everyone who connects with lived experience staff and the persons served by the program continually advances their cultural and linguistic responsiveness. 
2. Creating an Equitable Organizational Culture;  Recruiting, Hiring, & Retaining a Diverse Workforce;  Applying an Anti-Racist Analysis to Programs, Advocacy, & Decision-Making.  
3. The approach is to engage PWLE in ways that are accessible and empowering.  Tailor the content to relevant cultural contexts, recognizing diverse values, beliefs, and communication styles. This not only defines clear expectations, roles, and limitations but also ensures an organized process for orienting PWLE, creating a welcoming environment to build relationships and confidence.  
4. Note:  Don’t expect PWLE to have professional training;  provide training and support for effective participation. 
5. Ambassadors for the PLE (e.g., staff, board, volunteers) – particularly decision-makers – understand why to prioritize efforts to advance the work of integrating  PLE and how that work connects to the organization’s mission, vision, and values.  The organization regularly communicates about the work that PLE is doing to integrate and reduce inequities, further advancing equity. 

Tools and resources:

Recruiting, Engaging, and Hiring PWLEH

Phase 4:  Evaluating Engagements

Areas to address

1. Do you have metrics or ideas about what successful change might look like? Throughout the engagement process, is there a person, committee, and structure in place to ensure efforts across teams and offices are integrated and aligned and moving forward with the work to integrate PWLEH into the HRS? Can you build periodic pauses or gatherings to survey progress, challenges, and new ideas and ensure your work remains relevant? 
2. How will the organization or group measure long-term or short-term success? How will you?
3. How will you reflect on, learn from, and celebrate your accomplishments?  

Leadership readiness:

When preparing for leadership involvement with individuals with lived experience, consider the following:

1. What are you going to improve?  Implementation methods?
2. Capacity barriers like skills, lack of funding, and competing priorities?
3. Conduct systems analysis of root causes of inequities
4. Continuously evaluate the effectiveness and adopt strategies that will advance the work.

People with lived experience:

1. Using stories as data. 
2. Identify strategies and target resources to address root causes of homelessness through systems and policy change. 

Changing practice and culture

1. Engage affected  populations and stakeholders
2. Workplace support assessment

Phase 5:  Organizational Assessment/ Audits

Areas to address

1. How do they utilize PWLEH to achieve their strategic plans, goals, and outcomes?
2. What groups have power within the system? In what ways do they have power? Can you use “power mapping” to understand these dynamics? 
3. Consider an organizational assessment.

Leadership readiness

When preparing for leadership involvement with individuals with lived experience, consider the following:

Do individuals with lived experience  (PWLEH) already exist within areas of the organization, and if so, in what capacity? How are they currently being treated within the organization? Are they representative of the population being served? 

Changing Practice and Culture

1. How are we constructively disrupting existing norms and power structures that perpetuate inequities? How do we transform power dynamics and elevate marginalized voices into leadership and decision-making roles?
2. Communities meaningfully engage with PLEH in their system designs through different and equitable models to sustain the engagement to reduce the number of people experiencing homelessness.
3.  What policies and procedures do we need to include to ensure PLEs are included at the COC level, governance boards, etc.…?

Tools and resources

 Transforming Organizational Assessment Tool