Thera Scotland and People’s Voice Media are using lived-experience stories to open conversations about accountability, advocacy and better support in adult social care. In this blog, project manager and Head of Team and Operations, Kath Peters, tells us more.

What does accountability in adult social care look like when it is shaped by the people who experience services first-hand?

Since January, People’s Voice Media has been working with Thera Scotland to explore this question through lived-experience storytelling; gathering people’s views on what transparent accountability means in practice.

Thera Scotland supports people with a learning disability across Scotland, helping them have more control over their support and live their lives as they choose. Funded by IMPACT, the UK centre for implementing evidence in adult social care, our project forms part of a wider effort to bring research, lived experience and practice-based knowledge together to improve frontline services.

A key aim for the work is to create space for Disabled people, caregivers and supporters to share their stories, reflect on why accountability matters, and identify how adult social care could work better for the people who rely on it.

Training Community Reporters

The project began in February with online training sessions. Participants were introduced to Community Reporting techniques and supported to start meaningful conversations with others about their experiences of adult social care. The training helped people feel more confident to listen carefully, ask open questions and capture stories in a respectful way.

Members, volunteers and caregivers then spoke with friends and family about how the lack of accountability and inefficient complaints procedures affects people’s lives and what better systems could look like. These insights were brought together in a short video, which became the starting point for a Conversation of Change event on 29 June 2026.

From awareness to improvement

A Conversation of Change event is a tool that we use to progress a project from the stage of collecting stories, to using those stories to create change. At a Conversation of Change event, excerpts from stories sharing people’s lived and living experience are used as a catalyst for discussion, reflection and practical improvement. Lived experience is placed at the centre of the conversation, rather than seen as an add-on to professional knowledge. Service providers, supporters and members of the wider community are invited to actively participate in the event, learning from the stories and thinking about concrete actions towards change.

Through the video stories, Disabled people and carers were able to express what transparent accountability means in everyday life. Topics explored included:

• how decisions are explained
• how concerns are responded to
• how people can challenge poor practice without feeling ignored or powerless

Overall, the stories demonstrated that when support works well, people are more able to make choices, build confidence and live with greater independence. When it falls short, the impact can be felt not only by the person receiving support, but also by families, caregivers and wider support networks. This showed how practical issues intersect with people’s personal and interior lives.

Conversation of Change events act as a bridge between awareness and action. By hearing directly from people with lived experience, those involved in shaping and delivering services are encouraged to think beyond broad commitments and consider what accountability looks like in day-to-day practice. That might mean clearer communication, more consistent follow-up when concerns are raised, stronger advocacy routes, or better ways of involving people in decisions about their own support.

Actions for change

IMPACT will now use the video as a conversation starter at targeted events, to help partners move from reflection to practical action. These events will invite people to look closely at what has been shared, identify the actions that matter most, and consider how to make tangible change. Raising awareness of the issues is the first step, but the events create a clear route from lived-experience insight to demonstrable change in adult social care.

By continuing to share and discuss these stories, the project keeps attention focused on the people most affected by adult social care. Community Reporting and lived experience storytelling are used to open dialogue, challenge assumptions and support more accountable, person-centred ways of working. As the work develops, the conversations begun through Thera Scotland, People’s Voice Media and IMPACT’s partnership will help shape practical actions that are informed by the realities of people’s lives.

The Department for Work and Pensions is reviewing Personal Independence Payment (PIP) – a benefit that shapes the daily lives of millions of disabled people across the UK. Decisions made in this review will affect how people can pay their bills, access support, move around their communities, and live with dignity. That is why we are bringing people together for a roundtable discussion, and why the voices in the room matter so much. People’s Voice Media’s Head of Partnerships and Practice, Isaac Samuels, tells us why it’s vital that we create this space.

Lived Experience Roundtable on PIP

What is it?

On 5^th May 2026 at 6pm, People’s Voice Media are hosting a 90-minute online roundtable on PIP, as a space for people to share their stories, insights, and reflections. This will help shape a response to the current Personal Independence Payment (PIP) Review led by the Department for Work and Pensions.

This session is part of the wider national Call for Evidence, and it’s really important that the voices of people who live with the realities of PIP are centred, heard, and valued.

About the space

At People’s Voice Media, storytelling is at the heart of how we create change. This space will be grounded in that, offering a supportive environment to share real experiences of PIP, including:

• What’s working and what isn’t
• Experiences of applying, assessments, and decisions
• Where the system feels unfair or inconsistent
• How experiences differ across communities and intersecting identities
• What a more human, fair, and dignified system could look like

Why We’re Holding This Space

Reviews of this scale are too often shaped by data points, policy papers, and assumptions about what disabled people need – rather than real experiences of navigating the system. We wanted to create a space where that balance is corrected. We want people who have actually applied for PIP, been assessed for PIP, appealed decisions, waited anxiously for letters, and built their lives around this support to be able to speak honestly and be heard.

The roundtable is a focused conversation around two simple but powerful questions: What is working well? What is not working so well? From small practical improvements to bigger structural concerns, every contribution helps build a clearer, more truthful picture of how PIP is functioning today.

The insights, stories, and recommendations that come out of the discussion will be carefully captured and turned into a collective lived experience response to the government’s PIP review. We will also share key themes back with participants, partner organisations, and decision-makers who can act on them.

What PIP Enables Me to Do

I want to speak honestly for a moment, because this isn’t just a policy conversation for me – it’s my life. As a disabled person living with mental health conditions, PIP is not a luxury or an extra. It is one of the quiet, essential things that makes a decent life possible. Without it, the gap between simply surviving and actually living becomes very wide.

On a practical level, PIP helps me cover the real costs of being disabled – costs that people outside this experience often don’t see. It helps me pay for taxis on days when public transport is too overwhelming, or when leaving the house at all takes everything I’ve got. It helps me keep my home warm when my body and mind need stability. It helps me buy the food that supports my medication and my energy levels. It helps me pay for the little things – noise-cancelling headphones, a weighted blanket, the right kind of lighting – that make the difference between a manageable day and a day lost to sensory overload or a mental health dip.

But the impact goes far beyond receipts and bills. PIP gives me the breathing room to look after my mental health. It means I can attend my therapy appointments without having to choose between them and my electricity bill. It means I can say no to situations that would push me into crisis, because I am not financially forced to say yes. It means I can rest when I need to rest, instead of pushing my body and mind past the point of collapse and ending up worse off.

PIP also enables me to contribute. That part matters to me. Because I have this support, I can do the work I do: advocacy, storytelling, showing up for my community. I can hold down relationships. I can be a good friend, a present family member, a reliable colleague on the days I’m well. People often frame disability benefits as something that holds people back. For me, the truth is the opposite: PIP is what makes participation possible. It is the scaffolding that lets me show up in the world.

Living with a mental health condition alongside a disability means my needs shift. Some weeks I manage well. Other weeks, everything is harder. PIP gives me the stability to weather those shifts without falling off a cliff. It gives me dignity on my hardest days and independence on my best days. It means I don’t have to justify my existence every time my symptoms flare up.

This is the reality I want the review to understand. PIP isn’t just a payment – it is access. It is safety. It is the difference between being pushed to the edges of society and being able to take my place within it. When PIP works, it works quietly in the background, enabling people like me to build a better life. When it doesn’t, the consequences are serious – not just financially, but physically, emotionally, and psychologically.

That is why my voice, and the voices of others like me, need to be in this review.

Why Lived Experience Voices Are So Important

Lived experience is expertise. No one understands the impact of a policy better than the people who live with its consequences every day. When disabled people are at the centre of conversations about disability benefits, policy becomes sharper, fairer, and more effective. Decisions made without that expertise tend to miss the mark, creating systems that are harder to navigate, more stressful to engage with, and less responsive to real need.

Centering lived experience is also a matter of principle. “Nothing about us without us” should be the minimum standard. If the government is serious about improving PIP, then the people who rely on it must be genuinely heard, not just consulted as an afterthought.

What to Expect

The space will be rooted in lived experience storytelling, and offer different ways to contribute. Your insights will directly inform a collective lived experience response to the review.

Date: Tuesday 5 May

Time: 6:00pm – 7:30pm

Location: Online (joining link will be sent once you confirm your place)

How to join: Please email isaac@peoplesvoicemedia.co.uk with any questions, or to confirm you’d like to attend, and we’ll send over the joining link and any final details.

If you have any access needs or would prefer to contribute in a different way, please just let us know. We’ll make sure the space works for you.

We are grateful to everyone who is showing up to share their story. Your voice will shape what we take to government – and that is exactly how it should be.

Back in Summer of 2024, People’s Voice Media launched a project in Liverpool alongside The Bronte Youth & Community Centre. Young people came forward to share their stories and experiences with The Bronte, and contribute ideas for the future of the centre which is currently undergoing renovation work.

Since then, young people have developed skills in Community Reporting and have interviewed staff, peers and members of the community to gather their hopes for the future of the centre as well. These ideas will feed into the work that shapes the future of the building and help create a hub for the local community in Liverpool.

We have compiled the footage collected by the young people into a written insight report, which you can access via the link below. From young people’s vision for it’s the future, to it’s inter-generational impact & legacy, it’s clear that The Bronte has played a significant role in many people’s lives. Take a look and see what people had to say:

You can also view some of the stories recorded as part of the project over on the Community Reporter website here.

The future looks exciting for The Bronte, as young people and staff are currently working on a podcast series with Fact cinema in Liverpool, putting their Community Reporting skills into practice. Head over to the Bronte Youth and Community Centre website to hear more about their work & receive updates on the renovation plans.

Meet Jacqui Darlington from Rutland — a long-time carer, mum, and passionate disability advocate. Jacqui’s journey into community reporting began with Amplifying Voices, a programme designed to empower racialised individuals to share lived experiences through storytelling.

“I’m Jacqui Darlington. I’m passionate about health and social care and the rights of disabled people. I became a community reporter because I believe in giving people a voice and changing perceptions,” Jacqui shares.

As a carer to her son Joshua, who has Down Syndrome, autism and no understandable speech, Jacqui uses creative methods like photos and narration to help him express his story. “Even Joshua, who doesn’t use spoken word, now has a voice,” she says.

Jacqui believes strongly in the power of community reporting to uplift unheard voices. “It’s not just about skills—it’s about building a network, shifting mindsets, and supporting others.”

A fellow community reporter reflects: “People like Jacqui inspire us to think differently and to truly listen to stories that might otherwise go untold.”

Through her work, Jacqui is helping to change hearts and minds—one story at a time.

#AmplifyingVoices #CommunityReporting #DisabilityAdvocacy

Dragons Voice CIC started working with People’s Voice Media (PVM) on the HOME? Project in May 2022 after discussions with Hayley (CEO of PVM). We feel privileged to be part of this project as we have worked with another organisation on a similar type of project. Initially we intended to gather stories from the BNO new arrivals from Hong Kong but this was not welcomed by that community as many feared for their safety and did not want to participate in a project that will showcase how they are living now since arriving in the UK.

We discussed this with PVM and Kath kindly agreed that we could look at alternative sectors of the Chinese community. In the end we recruited mainly from Mandarin speaker from mainland China who arrived in the UK within the last 10 years.

We found members of the PVM team to be very understanding and willing to adapt to our changing circumstances. As the director authorising the partnership agreement, I felt that PVM as an organisation stands true to its values. I have met Hayley a few times when I attended some training (early 2021) and at a conference way back in 2017. What came across was the philosophy of non-exploitation and letting people take control of their own stories.

How have the participants benefited from the project?

The participants who attended the Community Reporter training gained skills in doing short snapshot and dialogue interviews. They used a tablet to record the videos at the training sessions. The interviews were spoken in Chinese languages so they did not have to struggle with speaking in a second language. Some gathered stories after the training and uploaded them onto the Community Reporter website.

Those who attended the archive research training completed summaries of stories they found in the Manchester Evening newspaper. The focus was on finding stories on positive contributions from migrants. The skills they developed were firstly to locate the articles online and then sifting through the articles to find relevant stories. To conclude, they had to summarise and transfer core information onto the spreadsheet.

The training provided opportunities for strangers to meet up with other peers and transfer some of the learning into practice. Those who struggled with the archive research due to language were supported by those who had better English abilities. The project provided opportunities for participants to talk about and reflect on their migration journeys. Dragons Voice created 2 part-time posts for its volunteers, one to co-ordinate and the other to support in recruitment and organising activities.

Has Dragon’s Voice learned anything from taking part or from the stories?

There are many similarities in the stories, namely people migrate for better opportunities in life. There are always challenges to overcome in the initial transition, be it the weather in UK, availability of food they normally eat, language barriers or employment opportunities. The approach to interviewing in Community Reporting is very different to interviewing to mine for information, which is how we normally work when interviewing guests on our radio shows. In future we should be less focused on getting information we want and instead adopt a facilitative approach for the individuals we interview to tell their stories.

As a director I have learned to devise employment contracts for freelance workers but is not quite sure what to do when they pull out mid-way. I have had to step in and luckily as I had overall management of the project, I was able to pick it up without much trouble.

The Knowledge Exchange event puts the stories we gathered into a wider context and the roadmaps produced offers a sense of direction for future actions. It was good to meet up with other partners at the partners meetings, who worked across broader areas and are much more politically aware. Their comments provided different perspectives and food for thought.

At the conference in Liverpool, I found out about the other great projects that PVM is involved in and it opened my eyes to the broader work of community reporting.

I am painfully aware that Manchester has diverse migrant communities and it was with regret that we did not include these other groups in our project. We did offer the archive training to ALLFM presenter but there was no uptake advertising it on the volunteers steering group meetings and at ALLFM studio. We need to consider in future how to engage with other migrant groups within Manchester.

It is with much appreciation that Dragons Voice CIC was able to be a partner on this project. We hope to be able to work with People’s Voice Media again in the future.

Denise Yuen Megson

Director

Dragons Voice CIC