Embracing Lived Experience: A Win-Win for Everyone
Guest Blogger: Scott Smith, CEO of Our Own Lives
Our Own Lives is a new nonprofit in Southwest Colorado and will serve people with intellectual and developmental disabilities with a wide array of supports. Formerly the direct service arm of Community Connections, we are beginning services on July 1, 2024. We are lucky to be bringing many amazing employees from Community Connections to Our Own Lives and with our start date quickly approaching, we have been busy filling a few critical empty positions.
Most of us in Southwest Colorado know that finding and hiring people can be a challenge. A challenge, however, that we have found a solution to. Because we believe that people with disabilities are the most important voice in determining how a disability service organization operates, we try to hire from within the disability community. This means recognizing lived experience as an equivalent to higher education and professional experience. It is not a requisite, as many of our talented staff do not have a disability, but it certainly expands the hiring pool. Hiring based on lived experience is nothing new and is probably best reflected in the Peer Support movement.
Peer Support generally refers to someone who has a health or behavioral health condition working in health care providing direct services to someone else with a similar condition or diagnosis. Key to this model is empowering former health and human service users to advocate for themselves. Peer Support found effective applications in chronic disease management (diabetes, behavioral health, cancer, HIV/AIDS) and in maternal/child health (breastfeeding, postpartum depression). As Peer Support has delivered exceptional results over the last several decades, it is expanding to other sectors and is key to our hiring strategy. A strategy that is paying off.
By seeking to hire people with lived experience, we not only ensure that the voices of the disability community are at the center of what we do, but we also have access to a whole new pool of extremely qualified and dedicated employees. We are fully staffed in almost all areas of the organization, and I believe it is a direct result of our approach.
Our Own Lives is not the only one in our region who takes this approach – shout out Southwest Center for Independence – but I would like to see it more widely adopted. I both expect and hope that other agencies will follow, not because it is trendy, but because it makes for the best services and has the best outcomes for all. From our backbone of Direct Service Providers, to our leadership team, Board of Directors, and Client Leadership Council, Our Own Lives has people with disabilities driving our work. Even our logo was designed, refined, and chosen by people with disabilities.
By hiring people with lived experience at all levels of Our Own Lives, we not only are able to quickly fill open positions with exceptional employees, but we also ensure that we adhere to our mission and values, because we truly are the experts in Our Own Lives.
– Scott Smith, is a health equity advocate and the new CEO of Our Own Lives. Scott has over a decade of behavioral health and nonprofit experience, and as someone who has a disability, he is passionate about promoting disability rights.