Lived experience: a human rights approach

In 1992, a group of young parents in Cornwall arranged a meet-up when they felt they did not fit in at ‘normal’ mum and baby groups. That group became WILD, and to this day, young parents and their babies help us decide how we work.

A group of WILD young parents offer their lived experience to WILD

This means something called lived experience is at the centre of all our work. Lived experience is what life has taught someone, through what has happened to them.  

It matters because it helps people understand what others are going through and how to help them. We listen to the lived experience of young parents and babies every day, and we use it to shape our work and to tell other people why things need to change. We listen through our work, through the voice of young parents and babies, and through our own team, which has lots of personal experience of young parenthood. 

Our human rights approach to lived experience recognises both young parents and their babies as rights-holders. We uphold children’s rights under the UNCRC, including the right to life, survival, development, health, and to be heard. We also support young parents’ rights to education, work, family life, and freedom from discrimination, ensuring these rights guide our services, our advocacy work and our approach to lived experience.  

Lived experience participation     

Using the Lundy Model and our Parent/Infant Pledge, we fulfil the UNCRC’s Article 12, which says that every young person has the right to express views on matters affecting them and to have those views taken seriously.   

For our babies and parents, we provide:     

• Safe, inclusive SPACE to form and express their views.  

• An AUDIENCE that listens to their views.  

• Support to share their VOICE and views.  

• INFLUENCE as their views are acted on.   

Recognising that parents’ views alone do not capture the whole family experience, we developed our ground-breaking Infant Pledge, based on the Scottish Pledge . This ensures babies’ rights and needs are upheld, and recognises infants as active communicators.    

Our trauma-informed practitioners listen to babies’ expressions through their gaze, movement, and vocalisations. Using evidence-based tools, observation, and reflective supervision, they tune into infants’ cues and help them be heard by their parents and other services. By sharing infant voices through first-person stories, photos, and shared reflections, their perspectives are included in service design, planning, and evaluation.   

We have been invited to share our practice and learning on facilitating the voice of the lived experience of babies and infants to support national organisations in reducing inequalities for young children.   

Lived experience voice     

Each year, c.700 parents and 500 children are supported by WILD. As they guide our work, they have built collective power, becoming a local social movement that is influencing local service providers and national funders on issues that matter to them. Their voices are being heard and acted on in sexual health, social care, perinatal communications, food poverty, housing, domestic abuse, arts and museums, suicide prevention, and children’s rights.   

Lived experience influences   

The voice of the local young parent community is growing louder and more influential, and our vision, as the UK’s largest young parent charity, is to now build greater power to influence decision-making and policy, and create long-term system change for all young parents.

We want to change hearts, minds, policy, and practice by:     

• Capturing and amplifying the voices of young parents and infants   

• Analysing findings to identify key themes and priorities   

• Translating lived experience into evidence   

• Using this evidence to guide policy recommendations, inform service design, and drive systemic change     

A lived experience charity     

Lived experience is also embedded in WILD’s leadership and staffing: 83% of our leadership team, 75% of staff, and 50% of trustees have lived experience of young parenthood. This ensures our decisions are always parent- and child-centred, and rooted in direct experience.   

At WILD, making lived experience central to every decision empowers young parents to shape the policy, practice, and outcomes that affect them directly.   

Read more on lived experience at WILD - Lived Experience | WILD Young Parents Project