Sharing lived experience in a public setting has so many benefits like building empathy, connection, and understanding. When done in a meaningful way, it can be an exciting and powerful experience.1
How youth workers create opportunities, recruit and support young people to share their lived experience is important in ensuring these opportunities are safe, meaningful and fun for young people.
A pre-brief gives someone a clear, detailed understanding of an opportunity and what they can expect. They normally include:
- Expectations: what to expect during the opportunity and what's expected of the person
- Information about the audience, tone, suggested structure and theme of the presentation. This info lets the young person know the appropriate level of detail to share.
- An opportunity for questions and to raise any concerns they have.
You can do a pre-brief in a few ways:
- Written document
- Position description
- Phone call
- In-person conversation
Include the below in your pre-brief:
- A rundown of the event or space the event will be held in. How will it look and feel? Include any social scripts and access keys.
- The event theme (if there is one). Does the young person need to share their experiences within a certain theme or lens?
- Who the audience is, including roughly how many attendees. This way, the young person can avoid sharing details that might be triggering for a specific group.
- Length of their presentation
- Will the young person represent all young people or just themselves?
- Will there be a question-and-answer time? If yes, how will this operate and how will the young person respond or signal for support if they don’t want to answer?
- Emergency contact details
The purpose of sharing might be linked to the theme of the event and might be very clear. If the purpose isn’t clear, the young person may need to think more about why they want to share their story and unpack this with you.
To support the young person to do this you might ask them:
- Why do you want people to hear your lived experience?
- What are you passionate about in relation to the topic or your lived experiences?
- What strengths or skills did you use when having that experience?
- Who supported you through that experience?
- What are some feelings you had during this experience?
- What are some service gaps you noticed during this experience?
- What recommendations do you have for policy makers or services based on your experience?
- What are the key takeaways you want the audience to have once they've heard you speak?
A young person sitting at a table, speaking.
Young people need to understand their boundaries when sharing lived experience and personal stories. To support them to do this, you could ask:1
- What important aspects of your identity or experiences are related to the topic?
- How do you feel when you meet someone who shares parts of your identity or has had a similar experience?
- What felt empowering or connecting when they shared with you?
- What aspects of your life and identity are private? These are things you don’t share with anyone or only a few trusted people.
- What parts of your experiences or identity feel raw, painful or complex?
- What would you feel comfortable with a stranger knowing about you?
- What is appropriate to talk about in the given context? Think about things like the audience’s lived experience, potential triggers, their understanding of the topic and if you need to explain certain concepts.
- How will you respond to a question you don’t feel comfortable answering?
- How would you like to be supported with this?
- Is there anything you or I could do to prepare the event host about your boundaries?
The guiding principle when sharing lived experiences, is to not share things that still feel painful, raw or complex.
If a young person is still navigating an experience, it’s probably not the right time to share that experience in a public setting.1
If the young person is still keen to share, you could encourage them to speak about parts of their experience that feel more manageable. You might suggest they write down the story they want to share, and practise it out loud in front of someone they trust, to test how it feels to share the story aloud.1
A photo of a young person, taken from behind their shoulder.
Young people should be informed about the potential consequences of sharing their experiences in a public setting.
Think about and communicate the following:
- The way a young person shares their experiences may create a permanent record of it. For example, if the young person is being recorded and this recording is shared on the internet. Remind them that whatever goes online is there forever.
- Consider de-identifying their lived experiences. If specific names are mentioned and those people becomes aware, this could have consequences like potential When words have been spoken or written that cause harm to someone’s reputation.defamation claims.3
- Some industries will not employ people if they have shared their lived experience with the public. Encourage the young person to reflect on their career goals and dreams before sharing their lived experience.2
Oversharing can happen in a few ways. The young person might share too many details with the audience, or someone listening might make a comment or ask an inappropriate question.1
Be clear with the young person about the scope of what they should share. Ask to hear or read the presentation or at least a summary. This should be done prior to the presentation to ensure the content is safe and appropriate.1
It’s hard to prevent audience members from oversharing. Remind the young person of this possibility and chat with them about whether they feel comfortable to assert their boundaries in the moment or if they would like you to step in. If they would like you to step in, chat about ways to do this that supports the young person and doesn’t feel undermining.
You might say something like:
- ‘Thanks for your question, we will take it on notice. Please let us know your contact details after the session and we’ll email you a response’.
- ‘We appreciate your question, let’s chat about it after the session because we don’t have much time and this will have a big answer’.
Sharing lived experience should be considered expertise in a similar way to professional or academic experience. It should therefore be remunerated fairly.
If a young person is travelling for an event, it’s best practice to cover their accommodation and transport costs.
- Be clear and transparent on how this will work. They may need to pay the costs upfront and are then reimbursed later, or you pre-book their tickets and accommodation.
- This may be the first travel the young person has done so check in and offer support.
If you're unable to cover expenses related to having a young person speak at an event, you should re-consider whether this opportunity should be offered to a young person.
A photo of a bed with orange cushions and a coloured paisley doona cover.
Some ways to make sharing lived experience more comfortable:
- Give the young person the option of standing or sitting when sharing.
- Encourage the young person to bring a fidget toy to use when speaking if they want to. You could also provide some for them.
- Set up the seating in a ‘u’ shape rather than rows. This makes the atmosphere more relaxed and personable and could help the young person feel more comfortable to speak.
- If a young person is nervous about speaking in front of large crowds, limit the amount of people in attendance if possible. If this isn’t possible, consider having the young person record their presentation then play it for the audience.
- Make it clear whether the young person will introduce themselves or be introduced by someone else.
- Where possible, have different lighting options. For example, limit fluorescent bulbs or have dimmable lighting.
- Have a quiet space at the venue for both presenters and audience members to go if they need quiet time or are feeling overwhelmed.
- Let the young person know that they can have notes to read from if they need.
Check in with the young person after they share their experience.
- It gives them the chance to unpack anything that came up for them while presenting.
- They may need support if they were triggered or overwhelmed.
- It can be a good chance for feedback - both positive and constructive
- It can also be great to simply share their excitement and congratulate them!
After the session, you might want to encourage the young person to do some self-care, as sharing lived experience can be draining.
You could debrief right after the young person shares their experience, after the event, or a few days or weeks later, depending on the situation and the needs of the young person.
A photo of a young person sitting on a couch, talking with an older person.
Morgan 00:00
In Victoria for children and young people, all of our work is centred on children and young people, obviously at Berry street. And so that's something really important for us to acknowledge. And I think it'd be really great to know where other folks are coming in from. So even if you just want to put in your chat in the chat, like which traditional lands you're coming from, and if you don't know, Google it and chuck it in the chat box, because I'd love to see where everyone's coming from.
And Can everyone see my slides?
Okay, Kiera, can you Michael, can you see them? Yep, beauty.
So before we kick off, I'll be mostly in the background today and Kira and Michael will be talking a lot after this. But I thought it would be important just to give you a little bit of an introduction to who Y-change actually is. Some of you, I'm sure have heard of us. But you probably haven't heard us talk about ourselves. So that feels important. So essentially, Y-change formed many, many years ago, it's essentially a 13 year in the making model of Berry Street. And we always bring in Lauren Oliver, who was the first Senior Advisor for youth engagement at Berry Street, who worked very hard to get this model up and running.
In 2013, essentially, there was a conference that was actually through YACVic, the Youth Affairs Council Victoria, and it was called Connect Four and it was talking about how do we partner better with young people experiencing disadvantage. And I was actually in the crowd, I was a volunteer with YACVic at that time, and Lauren had gotten together a group of young people from across the sector, including the Mirabel Foundation, and YSAS, and they delivered this really powerful presentation to the youth minister at the time, his name is Brian Smith. And essentially what they were saying was, you have to stop talking about us without partnering with us to actually affect systems change. And at the time, Crystal Moon, who was the first project officer at Y-Change, she was one of the founding members said this really powerful quote, which was, we know where the cracks are, because we fell through them. And that's definitely something that still echoes throughout our work we take very seriously our founders and really like passing the baton on, because so much energy and sacrifice and love and care has gone into this model. And it's something we're really proud of.
So Berry Street. We call ourselves a social and systemic change platform. We don't call ourselves a program on purpose. And that's because we don't want the young lived experience consultants to be seen as clients because they're not clients. They're our peers, young people aged 18 to 30. And they come to us with a lived experience of deep socio economic marginalisation and disadvantage. And so some of those lived experiences include family violence, homelessness, mental illness, the criminal justice system, etc, etc. And we have sort of a training and employment model. So it's one of the rare models where young people are actually hired as casual consultants with Berry Street as paid staff, and their title is lived experience consultant, and they see just the same as everyone else in the organisation. And essentially what we're trying to do is support the group of young people to adapt the skills they've already learned through their lived experience as a professionalised skill set. For us, it's not enough to just have a story of trauma. Even though storytelling is incredibly important and very powerful. We want to go that next step which is using the experience the lived experience, to then translate it into a professionalised toolkit. So they can do things like advocacy, sit on government bodies, work on co design projects in Berry Street and actually become advisors in their own right. So we work for many, many years alongside them.
To do that, we aim to do two key things. The first is that we want to challenge and change society's perception of young people experiencing disadvantage is somehow limited. We don't believe they're limited, we believe that that they don't have access to the resources that they need. So they're resource limited. And we also want to firmly place young people with lived experience of disadvantage at decision making policymaking and change making tables because we don't believe that they're there enough. And more often than not, when we have young people who do end up in these places, they are people with a lot of class privilege. And so we're very, very passionate about having young people who are the most affected at the table.
And just really quickly, before I hand over to Kiera to talk a little bit about who we are, it just feels important to talk about how we think so this is this, the iceberg model of systems thinking is something we use a lot. I won't bore you from talking about the whole thing. But essentially, you've probably heard of sort of iceberg models before because they're used all over the place. Sorry. But this one's really cool. And essentially what Y-change you're trying to do is create some space and time to think about how we think about young people. So the first three top layers, what we're constantly focusing on in the sector, sort of the patterns of behaviour, the systems and structures and policies, but what we think we don't do enough of is thinking about our mental model. So the values, assumptions and beliefs that shape all of our systems, and how the ways we actually believe and think about young people influencing everything that we're doing in this sector. So we're really trying to have some deeper conversations about that. And then I'll just pass over Oh, pass over to Kira, but I think Kiera's already got something to say.
Kiera 05:24
Thank you. Yeah, I just think what's good to mention the iceberg model as well, is people are quite comfortable seeing young people at the top, like in the events in public forums, in those public spaces, but not really comfortable sitting with young people. And like exploring those mental models and the culture shifts. So yeah, I think I just like to add that.
Morgan 05:46
Thanks, Kiera. And this is your quote.
Kiera 05:49
Yeah, so a lot of the time workers within organisations will set up services and programmes and groups for young people. And then, when young people who've been through a lot don't rock up, we get labelled as hard to reach or not engaged. But it's just a bunch of professionals in a room wondering what young people need and how best to support us without us even being there or asking us and it may not be something that's safe or accessible, or may not be something that we even need or want. And yeah, you miss out a lot when you don't include the ones who have lived experience so we can tell you what works, what doesn't and where it's also being really damaging. So we already know that we have value, and it's up to other people to catch up to catch up on that.
Morgan 06:38
Thanks, Kiera. And so just before we jump in now, I'll just give a bit of an introduction to the session. So thank you, everybody, for logging on today. It's a tough time, we're really conscious of that it's, you know, lockdown 6.0 for Melbourne's and you know, it just sort of wearing on. So we really appreciate you being here today, we thought it was really So Sam came to us and said he'd really love to hear from Kira, particularly here and Michael about how lived experience has influenced Berry Street and how Berry Street is kind of holding this incubator for us to keep doing the amazing work that we're doing, and just making some of our process visible.
So we've got Michael prisco, who's our CEO, he's really wonderfully joining us today. And it's just a conversation for you to hear a little bit about some of our inner processes and what's been happening behind the scenes, because it is actually quite rare for lived experience to influence an organisation and its culture, I think in the way it has at Berry Street and that's something we're extremely proud of. So there's two sort of bits. The first is that Kira will be reflecting on a series of questions, and then Michael will be reflecting on a series of questions as well. And then we'll open it up to q&a at the end if anyone else has anything else to say. But please feel free to put Q and A's in the chat box as well, because I'll be answering these as these two talk.
But before we jump in Michael and Kiera, was there anything else you wanted to say before we jump into everything now? Okay, let's go. So for Kiera, here's your list of questions. So Kiera has some reflections to go through. These were the questions that YACVic posed to us to reflect on on behalf of everybody else in the hopes that you might be able to learn from our process. So I'll hand it over to Kiera.
Kiera 08:22
Thanks, Morgan. So I first started with the Y Change when I was 17. And that was when Michael first started with Berry Street as a CEO, and he was going around and meeting all the teams. So when we met with Michael, he, like from what I got from him, he didn't really understand what Y Change was and had just come into Berry Street and being involved in a lot of adult Community Services organisations. And I remember Michael talking about an open door policy. So after he met with our team, I asked Lauren Oliver who Morgan was talking about before. If she thought that Michael would be open to mentoring me, and she said, Yeah, he might be so, decided to walk out Shanghai and ask you, which I don't think Lauren was expecting. And I think she was a bit surprised by that. And when I approached Michael and asked if he would mentor me, and I think he was a bit shocked as well. And I very intentionally wanted an opportunity to partner with Michael. So I've had that conversation with him. And he was like, Oh, yeah, I think I think that would be okay, we'll just have to like ask, you know, a few more people. And I wrote a letter requesting a mentorship with Michael and kind of talked through what I would want as opportunity and also wanted to hear if Michael wanted anything out of the opportunity as well.
And I think why I wanted to approach Michael is because we had a common interest. So he'd been working in the homelessness organisations before and been a CEO of a couple of different homelessness organisations and I had a lived experience of homelessness, as well as I really wanted to become an I really want to become a CEO and start my own organisation. So I thought that that would be a good opportunity for me to learn from Michael and learn about his journey and his path and how he got to become a CEO, what qualifications he had. So I pulled after a bit of back and forth for quite a long time. It finally got the Go ahead. And I put together all the agendas for the meetings, including like the meeting objectives on what you know, was googling frantically, like how to create an agenda and what, you know what different mentorships would look like, in the past so I could learn about how to do it, because it's something that I hadn't done before, either. So I sent the agendas to Michael before each meeting and researched about Michael and about different CEOs, CEOs, women come from disadvantaged backgrounds. So I was really prepared because I was really clear that I didn't want to waste his time. And we wanted this to be something that we can both get a lot out of.
And I think Yeah, through that. So that was kind of say the question for was there something that sparked this shift, I feel like doing the mentorship with Michael was a way like, from my perspective, Michael hearing directly about the work of Y Change and what we're doing and learning about me, as well and learning about my story and kind of how I came to Berry Street. And to Y Change and then getting a better understanding of Y Change in the work that we do from a lived experience perspective. And also, I think me, sharing with Michael as well, how we were really seen externally, like at the kind of leading youth participation, but internally, we weren't, you know, being involved as much. So kind of bringing that to Michael.
And then I think the other thing that sparked the shift was our policy submission for the Royal Commission into Victorians mental health system. So this was going on at the same time, as my mentorship with Michael. And myself and another, Y Changer got invited to the board to speak about it. And I have written a poem for the Y Change for the Victorian Royal Commission into Victoria's mental health system. So I've written a poem. And I think reading that, you know, we had one of the board members actually say that that had changed his mind. And he'd been working in the mental health system for, you know, his whole life and to hear from young people with lived experience changed his mind. And I think that had a big, big impact as well. Morgan, was there anything else you wanted to add to that question?
Morgan 12:56
Which was the question Darl, was
Kiera 12:57
it the just the first question,
Morgan 13:00
you know, this and Michael reflect on this, too. But we were when we were prepping for this, we were talking about how systems changes, so often a collection of things that collide together and explode, right? It's not often things that you can predict. And so I think what was happening at the time is that Michael was learning about Y Change the Kiera and, you know, was developing this, you know, working relationship and making sense of what we were doing, and really understanding lived experience. And then at the same time, we also published our first policy submission, which was the Royal Commission response, and we call that Curing the Sickness of the System, which was pretty substantial. And we were all pretty proud of it. And that made a big splash at Berry Street, it was a lot of excitement.
And I think it was two things. It wasn't just what we were responding to in the mental health service system. It was also us making Y Change's methodology quite visible to the organisation in a way we hadn't before. And this is the difficult thing is when you're starting up, something like Y change, a lot of it is inside a bubble, and you will know it and you think that everyone else knows it, but actually, you haven't communicated it yet. And I don't think we'd done that just yet, because that just wasn't where we were at. So once I came on board, we really started to think about, well, how do we want to communicate about what we're doing so other people can learn about all of the internal stuff inside of that bubble that we already knew. So I think it was those two things, obviously, the power of Kiera because she's such a force, and working with Michael, but then also making what we were doing visible through the submission, and then being invited to the board and seeing the reaction of the board. So I think you know, those two things were were pretty unique and great. Was that helpful? Kiera?
Kiera 14:42
Yeah, thank you. And yeah, just want to thank everyone as well for being patient with me like the lockdown is having a big impact on a lot of young people. So yeah, thanks for for the time today.
I think I really intentionally wanted to learn from Michael about what it even was, what a CEO he even did, because I wasn't even sure. And we did have to try a lot of tactics because I didn't know that you weren't just meant to go up and talk to a CEO, like you had to talk to someone else, you talk to someone else, you talk to someone else. And that was like a bit of a hierarchy. So I because I just went up and asked Michael, because yeah, wasn't sure about all those kind of organisational things that people working in the sector already know. So there was a fair bit of back and forth. And I was Yeah, probably confused about why it was taking so long. But I was excited once, you know, we were able to get going and start having those conversations. Yeah, and there was a few bumps in the road just with me not understanding the dynamics of the CEO staff relationship, and also not really knowing about organisational policies and stuff like that.
And I was also really worried about not saying not being good enough and saying the wrong thing. And it was really difficult for me that I had to work through a lot of like, internal barriers that I felt and feelings of self doubt and feeling like I was an imposter. And like I was in a lot of feelings of shame as well, I think that I had to work through. And I think recommendations that I would have, For others, it feels weird me being a young person to being like, here's what I recommend, but I'm just doing it like, like, let's stop letting that inner doubt, stop you. And seeing a leader in your organisation who you want to have a relationship with, and being intentional about why.
And yeah, being prepared doing your homework and research. And I think what also helped me was having a support person. So having Morgan and Lauren as well at the time to be able to debrief afterwards and say, I said this, and I wish I said this, I wish I said something else. And also feeling like I want to kind of prove myself as well and prove why young people with experience should be talking to people in positions of power and having these kinds of relationships. See, I think moving through your own internal barriers, and just going through it.
I think as well, like, you know, as adults and people who've been working in the sector a lot. People can grow a bit like cynical and lose a bit of optimism. And I think allowing young people to challenge the way things have always been done. And instead of saying oh, this is the way we've always doing it so we've got to do it this way letting in people challenging and doing it different ways and using your imagination as well. So I'm going to pass over to you, Morgan
Morgan 17:58
Yeah, so I think just just thanks so much Kiera, but just finishing up on that point. You know, something I think we really underestimate is the power of imagination in our sector and what's possible. And I think we we say all the time, our young people are so inspiring, and they challenge us But actually when you think about it, it's really hard to be challenged in that way. And I think this is a really great example of what happens when young people kind of kick your ass and say, What if we could do something really different here and taking it seriously?
So much of this when we talk about like what are our recommendations, and you'll hear from Michael in a minute, some of this is just be a bit more open to something being different and trusting that that could happen in your organisation as well when you find the right relationship.
I think we all grow really cynical or that can't happen and Oh, that's too hard. And there's all these sorts of things. But something that Y Change constantly show me is that it's it's building these deep and meaningful relationships across allyship across an organisation and just watching what flourishes and seeing and seeing how that influences an organisation. And that does take a lot of work. And it is a commitment, but it's it's something I think we really underestimate in ways cultures change. So thanks so much, Kiera. And I will now hand over to Michael.
Michael 19:18
Thanks, Morgan. I'd also like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land on which we're meeting today. For me it's Wurundjeri land and pay my respects to elder's past, present and emerging. So I'm really pleased to have the opportunity to speak to you today and to follow Kira. And I'm pleased because it gives us the opportunity, or it gives me the opportunity to reflect on how we got to where we got to and I think in a relatively short period of time, kind of two and a half years ish.
We've gone from having a group of lived experience consultants who were doing some really good work Outside the organisation to a group of lived experience, consultants who are doing continuing that work externally, but also have many tentacles throughout the organisation and are really influencing the way in which we're developing.
So in terms of the question, what was my previous thinking, I , of lived experience I, in previous roles, worked hard to establish service user advisory groups or tenant advisory groups. So it was always something on my mind, but I think the having Y Changers as employees, and having them as lived experience consultants who are colleagues was quite different. And when I came to Berry Street, I kind of got it. But didn't really and I think Kiera was spot on. When she, when she made the observation that I didn't really know what to make of Y change.
They were a, you know, a reasonably autonomous group within the organisation. And, you know, that would include media or other work that they were doing. And I got to say, when I first came on board, I'm like, holy Dooley, really, you know, the, the media side of things is pretty, pretty controlled, or even the external advocacy, but there was a sense of independence, and a sense of why change being a part of the organisation, but also having a sense of autonomy. And all I can say is that confused me and raised more more questions then. more questions than answers? I think.
What was the circumstances that led to my shift of understanding it was very much the the the mentoring relationship that I had with Kiera when when Kiera raised it, so Kiera was being quite polite in terms of, you know, what, what she was saying it, it took a bit of time to organise, so when Kiera first raised it, I'm like, I'm not I'm not sure about this, like, what does she want to get out of it? Well, I'm will will I be able to offer what she wants to get out of it? What about some boundaries? What about, you know, the way What, what, what's, what's the what's the purpose? Where is this going to end up? And that ended up in, in forcing Kiera to go through a really bureaucratic process to get to the point where it actually happened, which I'm really embarrassed about now. But that was that was the reality. really forced, Kiera to, go through the layers to kind of get to me if you like. And give make sure everyone gave the tick. And as I said, that is is is really embarrassing.
I think, in terms from my perspective, what the, of the of the mentorship, it quickly evolved into a co mentoring relationship, where I certainly felt like I was getting a lot out of it. Kiera was obviously smart and motivated, and also had a very thoughtful perspective about the role of lived experience and, and a really nuanced understanding about you know, the advice that she provides the organisation and what happens with that advice, like sometimes it's taken on board, sometimes it's not taken on board.
She came to the meetings really prepared, had a really clear idea about what she wanted to get out of them. And when I asked her opinion about aspects of Berry Street, I got really candid and really thoughtful responses, which really made me think differently about Berry Street and it was only through the sessions with Kiera that I got a sense of the potential of Y Change. It reinforced it. It sorry, internally the potential internally, and it made me excited more. It made me more excited about what they could do externally. And it made me realise we had this amazing resource at our fingertips, which we, you know, that that I wanted, I wanted everyone to have the conversation that I had with Kiera so that they could benefit from really understanding what Y Change can offer. And I'm really pleased, pleased to say that, you know, over the time, over the time, that understanding has built up across the organisation, was it a single light bulb moment, it actually was, in the last one of the last sessions with Kiera, you know, I'd asked her to prepare a list of things, a list of her view on certain things at Berry Street. And I remember, you know, quite clearly just thinking my God, we've got to benefit from this, you know, from this expertise, and what that led to is a much closer working relationship between myself, and Y Change and a much more active role for Y Change right across the, the organisation
And I'd say, what advice do you have for other others trying to change culture? You know, the first thing I'd say is persistence, like, unfortunately, what I did when Kiera approached me, was put up a whole lot of barriers. I wasn't thinking about them as barriers. The point I was, I was thinking, I just want to get comfortable with this thing. But at the end of the day, what I did was put up barriers, and Kiera persisted. And if Kiera didn't persist, we wouldn't be here talking today. I think the other thing I'd say is, be be confident that adding lived experience to your organisation will have a great benefit. So when you're advocating for it, know that it's going to produce great results and be confident in that.
And I hope that gives you more confidence to advocate for it. And I think the third thing I'd say is, you know, there are always people in an organisation who are advocating for the status quo, you're always going to get that. And that doesn't mean they're bad people does, it just means that they're at a particular point in in the change cycle, and you got to push through that. So I think they're the they're the main things I wanted to share.
Morgan 28:03
Thanks so much, Michael, we've had quite a few comments coming through. So I might, just direct them your way. Molly says I'm curious from Michael's perspective, what have you learned from Kiera in regards to engaging directly with young people? have you discovered any biases?
Michael 28:22
I think I think what I've learned from Kiera is the value that lived experience can play in different forums. And that that is a perspective that is required at the table. And it doesn't mean that it's the most important perspective. But it's just a perspective that has to be there. And I think that's that that is what Kiera made me realise.
Morgan 29:13
And what thanks, Michael, and just one more from Molly, how have you found you have grown as a leader because of the mentoring relationship? I think you've touched on it a bit already. But if you've got anything else to add,
Michael 29:24
I think I hope I have I certainly think of lived experience much more when we talking about doing doing things differently at Berry Street or developing or whether it's, you know, we're organising a forum. It's like, Hey, we need lived experience on the forum. It's It's, it's, it's made me appreciate the, as I've said a number of times the the value of lived experience and what it has to offer.
Morgan 30:01
And another question for you. Michael, so Sophia from Carer Gateway after your experience. Michael, do you have advice for how workers trying to get advisory groups off the ground can approach executives about the value of listening and mentorships?
Michael 30:17
I think I touched on that, I think, be confident when you're approaching them, that you're approaching them about something that is worthwhile. I think. I think getting the young people involved in doing that directly, I mean, Kiera did it off her own bat and will no doubt become a CEO of an organisation I'm, I'm sure. But, you know, I'd get I'd get young people involved. And I think be it's gonna happen slowly, too, I think is the other thing, I think it's not, it's not gonna happen Straight away, like even me with the lightbulb moment, it still took a while to get things in place and to to create the change within the organisation and to get, you know, more more leaders across the organisation engaged.
Morgan 31:37
Thanks, Michael. Did anyone else have any other reflections or anything of this? some really great comments in the chat, Thanks, everyone. And I think that there's been a lot of people saying how unique This is. And I think that's exactly why I think it's so important to get this story out there. Because this is a really unique, I think, study and example of what happens when systems change and what it means to have someone like Michael, also our director, Tom, who's in the chat as well on the call, like having these levels of allies like really meaningful, deep allies in an organisation that fight to have this work.
And this is often where we see organisations really fall down, because it's all happening on the ground, but they're having trouble actually influencing up top whereas we're extremely lucky in that we have this incredible group, including Kiera, and then we also have very firm support from the board down. And that's where you really start to see things shift. Another question here, I think it's for you, Kiera. So from Lake I'd love to throw a question back to Kiera if I can, there's been some talk around persistence and yours is to be admired. But what do you think we can do to mitigate the barriers you faced to achieving this level of partnership and prevent other young people like you from having to persist through these obstacles in the future? So do you feel like there's anything that could have happened for it for it to have been a little less painful for you, I suppose, is the the question.
Kiera 33:10
Um, can I just have a little bit of time to think about that, maybe if you want to reflect on it and I can come back,
Morgan 33:14
I'm going to reflect on this I always have things to say. So please don't think that I'm like talking on behalf of Kiera, I'm not. But there was something really important about that process. Even though it was painful. Especially for Kiera, Kiera has reflected to me and Michael, how much she grew throughout understanding how an organisation works.
So I don't know from of course, we always have to think about doing harm too right, that wasn't an experience where Kiera was harmed, but it was uncomfortable. And it was clunky, right? So at Y change, we're always saying that we learned so much through the uncomfortability of everything. The danger is when we get to harmfulness, right, which I think we do really well we mitigate that really well at Berry Street, so I don't, and Kiera will obviously reflect on this much better than I will because it was very experienced. But there was so much that both Michael and Kiera learned through just having to get through that clunkiness and so much Kiera learnt about how organisations function. And what that meant for her and her systems change brain. So from a systems perspective, I think it was actually really useful. But Kiera was there anything I don't want to put words in your mouth mate, So yeah, do you want to reflect Have you got some words yet?
Kiera 34:36
Yeah, I have words. And my cat has come to join us today's conversation. Me I think there was, yeah, it wasn't harm. I think it was a really big learning experience in something that I hadn't. from not having a job to suddenly stepping into a really big organisation. It can be really scary and so was a time after had a conversation with Michael? Oh, why did I say that something so stupid and had all their self doubt thoughts and I went and I sat under the table at Berry Street.
And I was just like, yeah, feeling really shitty about myself and Lauren came and she sat with me. And I think that that's the biggest thing we do in Y change, it's us together. It's never like I'm going through this by myself, it's like we'll do this together. So we'll we'll sit down together, we'll have a conversation, and so I was there writing a letter, Lauren was there writing it with me. And teaching me how to do the agendas as well, I think that together is so important. To me, it's never like here, this is your idea, I'll give this to you. I'll tell you what to do. And then you go off and do it. It's like, Let's sit down, let's do it together. And let's work it out together. So I think that is a really big thing. For me, that makes the ride easier. Yeah,
Morgan 35:59
um, you know, that's something we're really passionate about at Y Change, we cannot remove being uncomfortable. And if we're doing systems change, it's very uncomfortable. And so I think that goes back into, you know, what does it mean to have the right scaffolding and infrastructure. So we can just support young people through doing really difficult things, you can't remove the difficulty, and actually to do that actually takes away opportunities for learning. It's that they have people with them walking through it together.
So I'm just going to pick up on Dan's great comment. It is also the fact that sometimes advocacy is painful, awkward, uncomfortable that changes isn't easy. But is it that it's more important to have systems in place to manage potential harm than just make the ride easier? That's exactly right, is we can't remove all of the factors that are going to feel uncomfortable for young people, what we can do is put cushioning around that and support systems around that. So we walk through it together, and we make sense of it together. And that's where I think for us we see such extreme growth with the team over so many years is because we allow them to go through really real experiences with us. But Kiera, I think you want to save more words.
Kiera 37:16
Yeah, more words, it, showed me how to deal with those emotions as well, like in a professional context. So how to kind of manage emotions, and also like how to ask for help. And yeah, I think that, like doing it. It was I learned so much like I honestly did learn so much. And I would do it again. So yeah, and we are doing it again with the board mentoring. So Y Change lived experience consultants are now working with the board to do exchange mentoring. So yeah, I think that's really exciting. We also have another question from Dan
Morgan 37:56
We have many, we have many
Kiera 37:59
if you want to talk a bit more about the importance of time within all this, and I think for me, something that Lauren and I used to talk about it's like it was the right time for me. So I think it's important, like, you know, we talked about, like young people going in crisis and stuff like that. And for me, when I first started with Y Change, I, I wasn't in crisis. And I felt really, ready like I was at a time in my life when I was like, Oh, I don't know what to do now. Like I want to, you know, start working, but I've never really thought about like having a job or or what I wanted my goals to be in my life. So I didn't really have the time and space to think about certain that.
So I think when I first stepped into Y change having that, It was like the right time for me. It wasn't like I was getting pushed into anything it was it felt really right for me. And it felt like I was at a time in my life where I could, I wasn't going through so much that I could actually have that time to learn and that space to process and reflect on what I've been through to then share that with others. So I think, from my perspective, as young person with lived experience, it was that kind of right time and that doesn't mean that, you know, we started talking about like living experiences and how it's not lived experience doesn't mean that what we've been through is in the past, like we may still be going through things and managing things. But yeah, I think it's it's all about timing and asking young people like when works for them. And that may change as well.
Morgan 39:35
Thanks, Kiera. There's a question I'm going to bring up for Michael to reflect on in a minute. But I can see a lot of people asking about what is it that we're doing to give young people in sharing their stories and experiences and thanks, Luke for saying a bit more about what you meant with your question. Yeah, so there's so many things that we do at Y Change is a pretty unique sort of model. So obviously at the very core of it is the youth exchange principle, which is that It's deep reciprocity, and it's an it's, it's, it's developing very deep relationships over many, many years. So everything is guided by the young people. And this is a very unique model. And you know, we have, I think what's so great about berry street is they understand that we need space and time because that's the way that we function.
So we most when the young people are coming to us, and they'd say this to, they've come from being extraordinarily harmed by institutions. And so we don't take for granted that, that gaining their trust takes time, and it takes consistency. And everything needs to be guided by them. So informed consent for us is at the very core of everything we do. trauma informed practice is part of everything we do at Y change. But also I think, in some really practical senses. So we do debriefing and, and pre briefing before and after every single thing we do. So this is something that is is it, people don't often see this under the iceberg of our practice. But like we've already met, we'd gone through the questions we talk through what the challenges are, we talk through Are there any potential areas where you feel like that might be a bit risky to say anything about your story? How do we want to mitigate that? And then after every event, such as this one, we'll jump on and say, How did that go? What did you learn? What What might you do differently next time? What did you really like about that? And we we do that all the time. And that's where so much of the learning comes from in our model. So in terms of service of what we do to mitigate, it's those sorts of things that we will work alongside every day, all day together. And we're building those relationships, and we're checking in with each other. So something I'm often doing and our teams often doing, how are you? How are you? Where are you at today, I know we've got this meeting, are you still feeling up to it, like, especially right now, with everything going on in the world, you know, there's, we're doing some pretty deep work in family violence, for example. And that's just bringing up a hell of a lot for people at the moment in the team. So then it's up to me to go to our partners and go to people in Berry Street and educate them about, hey, these are the most affected young people in the community. So although they want to get things done, and they want to make sure everything's on time, we need to make sure we're never going into that retraumatization area. And that's up to us to come around them and have like a bit of a shield of support.
So because really, our deadlines are more arbitrary than their well being. So it's actually prioritising that in practice. And then one other question I'll just get, I think Greg has just come back on and I'm conscious, we're just going way over time. But Michael, if there's one question here, I think would be great for you to reflect on from Shelby, how do you navigate any competing priorities of the organisation and the young advisory members or the young lived experience, consultants are competing priorities of organisations versus well lived experience? Think of the priorities?
Michael 43:02
I think that's a conversation. So I think I'm trying to think of a specific example. But I can't give you a specific. I don't think I can give you a specific example. But I think it is about recognising that the Y change team are up for a discussion and have a an approach which is sophisticated, to the point where they understand they're not going to get everything that all of their advice is not going to be taken on board. It's just impossible at times, so I so I think that's, that's less of an issue than you might think. And I because of the relationship that I have with with Y Change, I feel really comfortable having those those conversations not that they're required. Particularly often I might say, I think for the most part, we're on the same page.
Morgan 44:42
Yep. That was really kind I think Dan was saying I could listen to this all day. I'm hoping to actually write up a bit of a reflection piece based on this with Michael and Kiera. And then we could circulate it around and just continue the conversation. So handing back over to Emily, I just To say Greco and then I'm like that's your surname
Emily 45:02
Yes, um, I do refer to myself as Gregor on these because there are so many Emily's and so it just, it removes confusion and I find it easier. So thank you. Thank you Morgan. And thank you Michael and Kiera. This review is amazing. Like obviously we have gone well over time, but I made the executive decision that the content was just too good to cut short. And I think like having you here we really really just wanted to make the most of the insights that you're able to provide in the story and you know, the other things can wait to next time they're definitely not as important as the lessons that we've learned today so so thank you so so much for your time. And and just amazing, amazing work. I know I've learned at least 15 things through this chat and this discussion. We did have to cut it a little bit short is because we do have Katia her sorry, had to here to talk about Learning from COVID, the online resource launch. And so what I might do, just so we can quickly hand it over to Katia and she can fill us in.
Katia 46:15
Thanks, Emily, just a moment. And thanks for that great presentation from everyone at Y change, I'm just going to share my screen really quick so I can walk you through. Awesome. All right, yeah, so some of you may already know me from my previous YPPN presentations or connecting elsewhere. But for those of you who are meeting for the first time, I'm Katia and I use she/her pronouns. And I'm really excited to be speaking to you today, calling in from beautiful Wurundjeri land where I live in work and play. And I want to pay my respects to their elders past and present and their young people as well. And it's great to be connecting with people from all over the continent today. So some of you will already be familiar with this project. But I wanted to provide an update on this YACVic's Learning from COVID-19 resource. So we all know that there's been a massive learning curve during the pandemic, and the pandemic has shaken a lot of matters to the top of the pile, and that knowledge needed to be collected somewhere. So learning from COVID-19 is a resource that we've developed from interviews with young people and youth workers across the state about how they've either adapted or created something new during the pandemic, to support young people directly, or issues that affect young people. And we've used that those interviews to create resources for all sorts of access needs and learning styles. So we've got infographics, web pages, videos, audio clips, and so on. And as you can see here, and I'll pop the link in the chat as well, you can browse the resource by topic, and then find resources based on who you are, whether you're a young person or youth worker, or both. And then what you need. And this is going to look even better in a couple of weeks time when some, updates come through. But there's already a lot of content on the page already. And I also wanted to speak to about the launch event that we have on Tuesday, the seventh of September, we're hosting a free online webinar to launch the resource that's going to be emceed by our very own CEO, Katherine Ellis. And so we're going to be walking through that resource and how to get the best use out of it. And we're going to be hearing from two guest speakers that were involved. And they're going to be teaching us about their adaptions. And those speakers will also be announced soon. But I'll share that we'll be learning about improving accessibility into COVID. Normal and bringing all those adoptions forward into youth work and also different forms of engagement, including offline, because we've done a lot of online work now. And I think by now a lot of us feel comfortable with online, but now moving into this hybrid model era, And how do we do that, so we'll be talking about that in the webinar as well. And then we'll be doing some activities for practical skills for managing self care and preventing burnout as youth workers in this ongoing pandemic. And I'm really excited about that one, because we've developed that with some young people's advice on using technology to manage boundaries. I've interviewed youth sector managers about how they supported their staff through the pandemic, as well as materials from a mental health nurse. So there'll be lots of resources informing that activity so you can visit the website if you go to the YACVic website, we've just we've got both of those links on the front page, so the resource launch as well as the actual resource. So visit the website, check out the resource and book your spot. And Sam also asked me to give a shout out and let you all know that we've got a tonne of other workshops and events happening over the next few weeks as you can see on our events page, so there's plenty to get involved with at YACVic If anyone said typically conference over that you missed out conference. We've got trainings and events and all sorts of things happening. Sorry of that was going a bit quickly. I was trying to speed through that, given the not wanting to run over time. Yeah, if anyone's got any questions, let me know. I'll put the link in the chat as well. But yeah, hope to see some of you there getting involved. It's going to be a really fruitful and useful webinar, I think.
Emily 50:32
Thank you for that Katia. That was really, really great. I'm sorry, if it can't speed up. And we do have a bit of time, if anyone has any questions about that. But also, if anyone would like to have any reflections from the amazing chat we had from Berry Street, or any announcements. So we're going to do all of this in nine minutes. So if anyone's got any announcements and questions for Katia, or any reflections from the amazing chat that we just had, Sophia.
Sophia 51:07
Hi, everyone, thank you, I just wanted to announce that we are starting to advertise for our young carer gateway advisory group this week. So if I can get the Okay, I'll send it through the email. But if you know any young carers, or any former young carers who are over 15, think about referring them, they don't need to have used our service. And that presentation from Berry Street was so fantastic. And I think it is a really valuable thing for us to listen to. Because then we focus a lot on the young people, which is really important, obviously. And that's what the whole purpose of these things are. But often the power is held by other people like just realistically. And so it was really good to focus on that and put the emphasis on that as well like focusing on the CEO and what the CEO needed to change, which, obviously Michael is a very reflective, amazing CEO who did change. So really grateful for that, because got many ideas.
Emily 52:15
Awesome. Thanks, Sophia. And just everyone's putting it in the chat, but well done. Like I know. And I think everyone knows a bit, it's been a journey for you and your your org. So like, amazing, so good. And so good. That's coincided with today's meeting, which is all about effective operations of those groups. So yeah, well done big props. And was there any other questions, comments, humorous anecdotes, or announcements to tie us up?
Oh, well, that's exciting. If then, what we will be doing is we will be sending the chat to Morgan, who was with us today. And she will be putting together a bit of a reflection to send to the group. And this meeting has been recorded. So if you do need access to it at a later date, you can have a chat to Sam email Sam, and I'm sure he'll, he'll give you access to the recording. So we'll take the last few minutes.
Just to remind everyone, if you do have any announcements, you can tack them into the agenda. And we will wrap up with the knowledge that the next meeting will be on the 21st of September. So this was out of sync in terms of it was a Wednesday, because that was when Berry Street it was available. But we'll be we'll be going back to Tuesday for our next meeting. And you can register for the next one. I think we'll finish up early because we didn't have a break. We just we just stormed through that. But it was just so amazing. I think we needed to and I'm really happy hope you got something out of it.
In terms of any ideas for the next meeting, because we didn't have a chance to discuss it at this meeting. If you have any ideas about guest speakers or topics of discussion or anything like that, if you can send them through to Sam and so he can get that ready for the catch up on the 21st. So yeah, any any ideas about what we cover them? He would love to hear them. Okay. Well, thank you so much for your time today. It was lovely to see some familiar faces and I hope to see you all in a month. Great. Thanks everyone.
Jen 54:54
Well done, Emily.
Emily 54:58
Good. Awesome. Yeah, the content was so good. I was like, we do the other stuff every meeting.
Jen 55:05
Yeah, I just found the Save chat button too. So I've saved that.
Emily 55:11
Yeah, um, Morgan said, Yeah, he she just really wanted to see all their reflections in the comments and all that sort of stuff. So yeah, if you can email that to her, it'll be amazing. Thank you so much for your help as well.
Nuriyah 55:26
I feel like we should attend more. Thanks, Jen. This was great. Yeah, we're good. I actually love hanging out but to get to the why ppm meetings are always really good. So always good.
Emily 55:37
Someone sort of asked me like, what do you get out of the YPPN? And I was like, like, I can't tell you on a piece of paper what I get out of it. But I leave the meeting without having gotten something out of it. Yeah. So and Gee, Sam did such a great job finding. Like we put the challenge to him and GCC really came through with the goods. He's done. Well, yeah. Cool. Oh, thank you.
Y-Change is a social and systemic change platform developed by Berry Street for young people aged 18 to 30 with lived experiences of socioeconomic disadvantage. As Lived Experience Consultants, the team work to challenge the thinking and practices of social systems through advocacy and leadership.
Presenters:
Morgan Cataldo – Senior Manager Youth Engagement, Berry Street
Kirra – Y-Change Lived Experience Consultant, Berry Street
Michael Perusco – Chief Executive Officer, Berry Street
- Psych Hub. (November 2021). Guide for sharing lived experience. https://9063283.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/9063283/Content/Guides/Guide%20for%20Sharing%20Lived%20Experience.pdf
- Wise Employment. (n.d). How social media can impact your job search. https://wiseemployment.com.au/resources/how-social-media-can-impact-your-job-search/
- Youth Law Australia. (3 August 2018). Defamation. https://yla.org.au/vic/topics/courts-police-and-the-law/defamation/