This animation is about the power of listening to people with lived experience. It shares real stories of people who have used health and care services and how their ideas, experiences and voices can help make services better for everyone.
Click here to view the video: https://vimeo.com/1214301872/907ef9b19e?share=copy&fl=cl&fe=ci
The following is written by two of LPT’s lived experience partners who co-produced the animation:
We are proud to share our collaboratively co-produced animation — a heartfelt, honest and powerful piece created by Lived Experience Partners from Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland (LLR), showcased at the FYPCLDA Directorate (Families, Young People, Children’s, and Learning Disability and Autism Directorate) Executive Board Lived Experience Spotlight Session in November 2025.
Our Journey
This did not happen overnight. Our journey has been one of building trust, breaking down barriers and refusing to accept that lived experience should ever be an afterthought. We have sat in rooms where our voices were welcomed but not always acted upon. We have felt the frustration of fragmented systems, duplicated efforts and initiatives that began with promise but lacked the organizational backing to truly embed change.
But we kept going — because we knew what was possible and necessary for us to have better experiences.
Together, we developed a vision for a unified Lived Experience Leadership Framework across LLR — one that doesn’t ask people to tell their story repeatedly to different boards and directorates, but instead creates a single, joined-up approach that works cohesively across the whole system. We presented a Tiered Approach Framework to the LPT Trust Board in 2024 and this animation is the next step in bringing that vision to life — making it visible, accessible and impossible to ignore.
We have drawn on the experiences of people across multiple communities — those living with Autism, Learning Disabilities, Children and Young People, and Parents and Carers — because we know that no single story tells the whole picture. Each voice adds something irreplaceable.
What We Are Working Towards
- A tiered, joined-up co-production framework embedded across all LLR health and care services — moving beyond one-off initiatives to lasting, operational organisational change
- Integrating lived experience meaningfully into service design, delivery and decision-making — not as consultation, but as genuine leadership
- Breaking down the barriers that different communities face, through one cohesive model that eliminates duplication and centres what truly matters
- Using proven, successful models — such as CAMHS (Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services) Eating Disorders carer representatives in substantive, paid roles — as blueprints for system-wide replication across all services
- Ensuring that lived experience leadership is sustainable, trauma-informed, inclusive and essentially protected — embedded across all partnership boards, directorates and organisational levels
Why This Matters
Every story in this animation represents someone who has lived through something hard — and chosen to use that experience to make things better for others. That is not a small thing. That is leadership in its most human and powerful form.
We believe that when systems truly listen — when lived experience is woven into the fabric of how services are designed and delivered — outcomes improve, trust grows, and people feel seen and heard.
That is the world we are working towards.
This animation is our invitation to you to be part of it.
With the deepest gratitude and love to every single one of our Lived Experience Partners at LPT and FYPC LDA — your stories, your strength and your unwavering commitment to change are the heartbeat of everything we do.
Thank you 🙂