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Lived Impact Guide 04 - For Organisations
From Consultation to Co-Design.
A complete practice guide to genuine co-design in lived experience work. 10 chapters covering the evidence base, the Lived Impact Method, trauma-informed facilitation, and a practical roadmap for organisations ready to move beyond tokenism.
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A complete methodology
From the evidence base through to a step-by-step co-design process your organisation can actually implement.
Diagnostic tools
Assess where your organisation sits on the participation spectrum — and what it would take to move further.
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Lived Impact Guide - Organisations
From Consultation to Co-Design
Written for leaders, managers, and practitioners in health, mental health, disability, and social services who want to move beyond tokenism - and understand exactly what that requires.
"The gap between consultation and co-design is not a gap in intention - it's a gap in structure."
Most organisations want to do this well. The evidence is clear about what "doing it well" actually requires. This guide gives you the framework to close the gap.
Contents
What's inside
Why This Distinction Matters
Consultation and co-design describe fundamentally different relationships between organisations and the people they serve. This chapter explains why the difference is not semantic - and why it determines whether lived experience knowledge actually shapes outcomes.
The Participation Spectrum
Arnstein's Ladder of Citizen Participation remains the most cited framework in participatory practice. This chapter maps the full spectrum from manipulation to community control - and locates where most organisational "consultation" actually sits.
What the Evidence Says
A synthesis of Australian and international research identifying the consistent factors that distinguish genuine co-design from consultation - including power redistribution, problem definition, feedback loops, and organisational culture.
Common Barriers Organisations Face
Time constraints, risk aversion, lack of staff capability, tokenistic representation, consultation fatigue, and governance structures that exclude lived experience. The research is clear about what gets in the way - and what to do about it.
What Genuine Co-Design Produces
Better service design, higher trust, more innovative solutions, reduced re-traumatisation, stronger workforce capability, and real accountability. The evidence on outcomes from genuine co-design is consistent across sectors.
The Lived Impact Method: From Stories to Systems
A six-stage methodology built from practice: Connect, Explore, Design, Test, Implement, and Sustain. Each stage has its own purpose, methods, and indicators of genuine participation - forming a complete arc from stories to systemic change.
The Five Intelligences of Co-Design
Effective co-design facilitation requires five distinct intelligences: Experiential, Relational, Systems, Narrative, and Transformative. This chapter explains what each requires in practice - and why all five are necessary.
Trauma-Informed Co-Design in Practice
People engaging in co-design have often experienced trauma at the hands of the very systems they are helping redesign. This chapter covers the six principles of trauma-informed practice and what they require of facilitators and organisations.
The Diagnostic Framework
Six diagnostic questions to assess where your organisation sits on the participation spectrum - and a structured framework for identifying the specific structural changes needed to move from consultation to genuine co-design.
From Assessment to Action
Turning the diagnostic into a plan. Four concrete steps: naming what you are actually doing, identifying the structural change that matters most, building accountability into the process, and measuring what actually matters.
Inside the guide
The participation spectrum
Based on Arnstein's Ladder of Citizen Participation (1969). The guide maps where most organisational consultation sits - and what moving up the ladder actually requires.
Consultation asks people what they think. Co-design asks them to help build it. The difference is not a process — it's a power relationship.
— Hayley Brown, Lived Impact
Audience
Who this is for
This guide is for you if...
You lead or manage a team that involves people with lived experience in service design, policy, or governance
Your organisation does consultation and you want to understand what genuine co-design would actually require
You've been told your co-design process is tokenistic and you want to understand why - and what to change
You're building a business case for investing in genuine lived experience co-design and need the evidence base
You want a diagnostic tool to assess where your organisation sits on the participation spectrum
You work in health, mental health, disability, housing, or social services and want to do this right
10
Chapters covering the evidence base, the Lived Impact Method, and a practical implementation roadmap
6
Stages in the From Stories to Systems methodology - from relationship-building to sustained systemic change
5
Intelligences of effective co-design facilitation - and what each requires in practice
About the author
Hayley Brown
Hayley is a lived experience leader, consultant, and the founder of Lived Impact. She has worked across domestic and family violence, child protection, mental health, disability, and community services — both as a person with lived experience and as a systems-level strategist. She writes from both sides of the table.
Stop consulting. Start co-designing.
The evidence is clear about what genuine co-design requires. This guide gives you the framework to assess where you are - and the roadmap to get where you need to be.
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This guide is available for individual purchase, client-use licensing and organisational use.
Please do not purchase one copy and distribute it. For client packs, team access or program use, contact Lived Impact for licensing options.
View licensing optionsThis guide is licensed for individual use by the purchaser only.
You are welcome to use the ideas, prompts and reflection points in your own practice. However, the guide itself must not be copied, forwarded, uploaded, printed for others, shared with clients, or distributed across a team without an appropriate multi-user, client-use or organisational licence.
If you would like to use this guide with clients, groups, teams or programs, please contact Lived Impact for a multi-use licence. View licence options.
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