On the 11th June 2018, around forty community justice stakeholders gathered at Alloa Town Hall in Clackmannanshire. They considered how to build social capital and equity so that people with lived experience of trauma could influence improvement in services and systems.

Participants included a cross party set of politicians, other local leaders, academics, voluntary sector representatives, a prison governor, a police chief inspector and people with lived experience.

Participants had asserted that they value lived experience expertise, therefore there should be a move towards practices such as renumeration and introducing structure to engage those with lived experience safely, authentically, meaningfully and effectively.

A group of people with lived experience stepped forward. They collaborated to define the values by which a social enterprise run by people with lived experience could offer training and consultancy services in a sustainable model. This way of working would move stakeholders away from the more traditional approaches around participation, engagement and ‘consultations’ that were often tokenistic or an afterthought, to something that is much more representative of what the sector looks like now.