Daisy Elvin, Head of Operations at TONIC.

Truly Hearing the Voice of Lived Experience.

At TONIC, the whole team strives to ensure we truly hear, listen to, and convey the voices of people with lived experience through our work. The aim of this is to influence positive change and drive improvements, often in relation to local support services or within commissioning decision making. We do this through our approach that combines inclusivity and co-production through trauma-informed research.

One example of how we do this, is regularly co-producing or consulting people with lived experience on the design of research materials or evaluation approaches – mostly recently doing this with The Children’s Society Youth Participation Group for an evaluation we are currently undertaking with some of their services.

Below, are some different examples of ways in which we have embedded the voice of people with lived experience, sometimes also known as ‘experts by experience’ across a variety of projects we have completed over the past few years.

Review of the New Service for People Who Have Experienced Birth Trauma or Loss in Kent and Medway

TONIC was commissioned to review the development and implementation of a new service, which had been designed to support people who have experienced birth trauma or loss. This was to inform the future roll out of additional perinatal mental health services across the rest of Kent and Medway. The aim was to gather the thoughts of those with lived experiences of birth trauma or loss on how services should run and how they can be set up to ensure women and their families are supported as effectively as possible, as well as exploring barriers to access.

For this piece of work, not only did the TONIC team engage over 400 women with lived experiences of birth trauma or loss and 30 birthing partners as the sample, but we also showcased the voice of service users by:

  • Supporting four women and one birthing partner to each write a detailed case study, facilitating a deeper understanding of real-life experiences, seeking to evoke empathy in commissioners.

  • Consulting the Association of South Asian Midwives (ASAM) to fully understand the unique experiences of Black, Asian, and ethnically diverse communities, broadening the reach of the project and ensuring in-depth insight from a variety of perspectives.

  • Co-producing recommendations with a small group of people with lived experience.

  • Involving an individual with lived experience in quality assuring the report via proof-reading and sense-checking.

  • Providing the new service provider staff with contact details for over 70 people with lived experience who agreed to be contacted in the future to provide ongoing feedback. 

“Thank you for letting me be involved, I really enjoyed it!”

Read the full project round up here: https://www.tonic.org.uk/thrive

Research for the Home Office on the Perpetration of Domestic Abuse by those within Minoritised Communities

Following an acknowledgement from the Home Office that there is a lack of research into how domestic abuse is perpetrated within minoritised ethnic communities and LGB and/or T+ communities, TONIC was granted funding to undertake research to address these knowledge gaps and produce recommendations about how to promote behaviour change within these cohorts.

By engaging over 200 people with lived experience as well as key stakeholders, TONIC aimed to:

  1. Explore, understand and highlight what work is already being done within these communities. 

  2. Examine the extent existing provision is relevant, accessible and inclusive. 

  3. Consider how programmes, services and systems could be adapted to better engage these groups, meet their needs and reduce instances of domestic abuse. 

For this project, the TONIC team enlisted the support of an advisory group, comprising of individuals with lived experience, who supported throughout the research project with an understanding of the aims and objectives. Furthermore, as part of the quality assurance process, they acted as peer reviewers of the findings and report.

“I really enjoyed working together and seeing the results”

Read the full project round up here: https://www.tonic.org.uk/homeofficeresearch

Essex Drugs and Alcohol Needs Assessment

TONIC was asked to conduct a drugs and alcohol needs assessment across Essex, in order to inform future planning and commissioning decisions. For this, TONIC collaborated with the Essex Recovery Foundation (ERF) and a team of Peer Researchers – who all had personal lived experience of substance use, addition, and recovery – to conduct this piece of work. TONIC delivered training, facilitated triangulation workshops and provided ongoing supervision to the team of Peer Researchers, who supported with fieldwork for the project and conducted a number of site visits. This was an exciting opportunity to up-skill people with lived experience and provide them with the chance to be involved in important research. This approach enabled the research team to hear the voices of over 500 local people.

“I also wanted to take this opportunity to say thank you to TONIC for an excellent piece of work.

I know that our Peer Researchers found it really beneficial being part of this process and particularly valued the training they received before they carried out the fieldwork.”

 Read the full project round up here: https://www.tonic.org.uk/essex-dana

Serious Violence Community Consultation in Warwickshire

To support with the implementation of their Serious Violence Prevention Strategy, Warwickshire County Council commissioned TONIC to undertake a community consultation, that encompassed a stakeholder mapping exercise, insights research, and co-production activities. The aim of this community consultation was to gather detailed qualitative data from the local community.

Of particular relevance to this Team Takeover, TONIC facilitated a series of in-person co-production workshops with young people and adults in each of the five local areas that were the focus of this work. TONIC researchers used insight cards to guide discussions and prompt participants to brainstorm potential solutions to some of the issues identified as contributing to serious violence within the local areas. In total, TONIC engaged more than 70 local residents in these co-production activities. Their suggestions directly influenced the recommendations that were then put to Warwickshire County Council and partners to take forwards.

“Thank you for listening to me, I really appreciate the opportunity to share.”

Read the full project round up here: https://www.tonic.org.uk/warks-sv-cc

Lived Experience Evaluation Panels for the Re-commissioning of Victim Support Services in Avon and Somerset

The TONIC team have conducted numerous projects, funded by the Office for the Police and Crime Commissioner (OPCC) in Avon and Somerset, which have all had a focus on capturing and amplifying the voice of people with lived experience. For example, the TONIC team completed a dedicated Victims’ Voice Project in 2024, facilitated focus groups with victims, women, and individuals with a disability to convey their opinions about the draft Police and Crime Plan 2025-29 priorities, and provided the OPCC with contact details of 50 local residents who consented to assist with future feedback and co-production work.

However, the project that really stands out as a time in which the TONIC team brought the voice of those with lived experience into a setting that it is rarely represented in, was during the moderation process of prospective service providers as part of the OPCC’s recommissioning. To achieve this, the TONIC team recruited for and ran a series of Independent Evaluation Panels made up of victims and service users brought together to assist in the scoring of bids and proposals for victim services funding. The inclusion of these panels within the re-commissioning process, acknowledged that people with lived experience are often best placed to advise on what support and services will make a positive difference to their lives, helping to ground discussions and scoring in reality and maintaining a person-centred perspective throughout.

“Thank you for the experience, it actually helped me to realise that people with lived experiences are taken seriously.”

Read the full project round up here: https://www.tonic.org.uk/as-vep-24

Evidently, there are a range of ways the TONIC team has, and will continue to, incorporate the voice of lived experience into our work to guarantee meaningful, relevant, and impactful findings, that reflect the realities of real people. Whilst ensuring this always remains a focus of our work, we will never overlook the fact that appropriate safeguards must be in place to allow people with lived experience to share their views and opinions in a secure and ethical way. We regularly receive feedback on how cathartic our participants have found the process of engaging with our projects, which is always lovely to hear and serves as a constant reminder of why we do this work.

Written by Daisy Elvin, Head of Operations – April 2025.