Get advice from people with lived experience

Whether you’re working to develop a more inclusive housing service, or advocating to end rainbow homelessness, the most important people to involve are those who have lived experiences of homelessness and housing instability. Connecting with people who have these experiences helps to ground your work in the realities people are facing and meet people’s real needs.

You could hire lived experience roles, develop relationships with groups and leaders in your community, create a formal advisory group, or involve people in co-design or service improvement initiatives. If yo'u’re inviting people into this work, make sure they’re well compensated, supported and respected.

If you’re running a service, create processes to hear from your service users, and from people who are trying to access your service. If you have a formal complaints process or issues register, check back over the last couple of years to see whether you’ve had complaints or issues related to rainbow experiences.