Experts By Experience Lead

New role with a real opportunity to make a difference
Simon Community is Northern Ireland’s leading homelessness charity. We support people experiencing homelessness and work to prevent homelessness, provide the right support at the right time, and help develop lasting solutions so that homelessness can be ended.
This is a new role at an important point in Simon Community’s journey. You will help embed our Experts by Experience Framework and build on the work already started through Champions for Change.

The ambition is simple. We want people who have experienced homelessness to be involved in the conversations that affect them. We want their knowledge to influence decisions. And we want their voices to help shape not just Simon Community’s work, but the wider response to homelessness, including policy, practice and public understanding.
If that matters to you, we’d like to hear from you.

Mission
Help Simon Community put the knowledge and expertise of people who have experienced homelessness at the heart of how we work, so they can influence the services and decisions that affect them and contribute to the wider response to homelessness.

You will coordinate and develop our Experts by Experience team (often know as our Champions for Change), and you will work with colleagues across Simon Community to make sure the expert knowledge and experience informs how we work. Our guiding principle is simple: Nothing about you, without you.

This is not about asking people for their views once a decision has already been made. It is about involving people early, creating genuine opportunities to influence our thinking, and following through on what we hear. Not every suggestion can be acted on, but every contribution should be considered seriously and, where it is not taken forward, the reasons should be explained openly and respectfully.

What we are looking for
We want someone who genuinely believes that people who have experienced homelessness have valuable knowledge and should have a say in what happens next.
You will be warm and approachable, and confident enough to challenge the organisation when we are not getting it right. You will not be expected to arrive with all the answers; part of the opportunity is to help shape what good involvement of Experts by Experience looks like at Simon Community.

What success in the role looks like

• Experts by Experience feel their voices are taken seriously.
• People are involved before decisions are made, rather than only being asked for feedback afterwards.
• Staff feel more confident involving Experts by Experience in meaningful ways.
• People can identify changes that happened because they were involved and understand why other suggestions were not taken forward.
• Leadership and the Board hear directly from Experts by Experience and understand what their contributions mean for our work.
• Knowledge from Experts by Experience informs wider policy, practice and public narratives about homelessness.
• The knowledge and expertise of people who have experienced homelessness becomes part of how Simon Community works and contributes to the wider effort to end homelessness.