Lived experience advisory group (LEAG)
The LEAG is a group of individuals across the UK with experience of, and a passion for, tackling injustice. They help shape the work of Just Fair.
Central to human rights is the principle of participation – everyone has the right to shape the decisions that affect their rights and their lives.
From decisions about our own healthcare, education and employment, right up to the policies, laws and systems that affect the world we live in – our rights aren’t simply given to us, but are ours to shape, claim and enforce. In fact, decisions, policies and systems work better when they centre the views not just of professional experts, but also the views of ‘experts by experience’ – people with personal, ‘lived experience’ of the issues.
At Just Fair, we want to practise what we preach when it comes to participation and make sure our work is shaped by the people with lived experience of the injustices we’re trying to fight.
We want to find ways to better work with communities directly affected by injustice, so we can advocate for our rights together. We’ve been working with our Lived Experience Advisory Group (LEAG) to help us work out how to continue our journey towards a more participatory, rights-based way of working.
The LEAG champions lived experience within Just Fair by bringing their own insights, expertise, and perspectives to shape Just Fair’s work. Members advise on how to centre lived experience across our strategies and programmes and help identify ways to bring additional voices into our advocacy.
Meet members of the LEAG
Our Lived Experience Advisory Group has five members, who bring a wide range of experience and expertise. They include…
Gillian
I bring extensive experience in the health and social care field as a person with long-term health conditions.
I have actively participated in research and co-producing services, and I currently sit on the equity and diversity group at NIHR and the West Midlands Clinical Senate Council at NHS England.
I am a part-time, second-year student studying for a BA in Health and Social Care. I love comedy, and am inspired by my children. I am so proud of them.
Fatiha
As a community leader, I have a lot of passion for community and positive change and I feel that my leadership skills and experiences will help to raise awareness about different issues and help find solutions to these issues.
I have been involved in a lot of campaigning , advocacy and community organising to help our community be a better place for everyone.
I'm a travel agent and I'm a community leader, I love creativity and art. I'm inspired by positive change and community leadership.
Jenny
I am a disabled person with insights into health, education, and social care systems. I’m a single parent to four children, including two with disabilities and a Governor at a school for children with social, emotional, and mental health difficulties. I have worked for a Disabled People’s Organisation for over 16 years and I also volunteer at a local Samaritans branch, co-chairing their disability network, and serves on a local suicide prevention forum. As a bisexual woman, I advocate for LGBTQ+ rights. I am also completing an MSc in Inequality and Society.
With thanks to our previous Lived Experience Advisory Group Members, without which this work would not be possible – Dylan, Charmain and Maggie.
Reports from the LEAG
Below are reports developed with the LEAG on work they’ve undertaken with Just Fair.
Blogs on the LEAG's work
Check out some of our blogs below which chart the journey and the work of the LEAG.
Timeline
The LEAG decided to develop our own submission to the UK Right to Food Commission for May 2026. This means over these months we did a deep dive with various Just Fair staff members into what the right to food means and how it’s being violated across the UK. Then we shaped our own experiences and recommendations into a report for the Commission.
The team has been flat out in the second half of 2025.
We spoke at the Just Fair strategy launch event sharing our insight on how we supported the development of the strategy with a wide audience.
We have been busy developing processes of two-way accountability with the Just Fair board of trustees and we were able to test these processes successfully at the January 2026 in-person trustee board meeting. We are incredibly excited to build upon the relationships we developed at this meeting.
Team members have also been developing testimony that will support the Just Fair’s Right to Health campaign.
The LEAG also met in person with Just Fair’s Trustees in January – and we’re continuing to explore two-way accountability together.
One year in to our work, the team has been incredibly busy and has set out our plans for the next phase of the LEAG.
We published reports on our five principles work, our evaluation and lessons learned.
We had fantastic input and involvement at Just Fair’s ‘Rights for all: towards a fairer UK’ in March where we were able to share our thoughts on Just Fair’s most recent submission to the Committee on Economic, Social and Rights.
The group has also grown from 4 to 6! We prepared a process for recruiting 2 new members to the LEAG. It was process that saw many excellent candidates apply and we are happy to welcome both Jenny and Maggie to the group. We are really excited to be working with them.
During this 6 month period the LEAG got deeply involved in the work of Just Fair – particularly in our work on the incorporation of rights and our ‘5 principles’ for effective incorporation.
The group also worked with our Right to Health Lead to advise and reflect on our new right to health campaign and report.
The group also got the chance to meet in person in London in late July 2024.
Based on the proposal developed by Nic and Hinda, and thanks to funding from Tudor Trust, our new Associate, Kahra Wayland-Larty set to work to recruit and support an initial developmental advisory group to co-produce, with our trustees and staff, a proposal for a potential more permanent advisory board or group.
The group met regularly to work together to understand the work of Just Fair and pull together a proposal.
This proposal was presented by the LEAG members to the Just Fair Board of Trustees at a meeting in February 2024 and passed unanimously. It included the following goals:
- Feeding into the Just Fair strategy.
- Further developing strategic objectives relating to Just Fair’s engagement of lived experience, including the outreach strategy.
- Advising on project work.
- Testing approaches to two-way accountability to the Board of Trustees.
We were conscious that how a group is established, is as important as what it does. As such, in December 2022 we advertised for a consultant(s) to develop a proposal for us on how a ‘Leadership Advisory Board/Lived Experience Advisory Board should be established by Just Fair’.
In a wonderful turn of events, two of our original Community Researchers, who had kicked off this whole project, Nic Cook and Hinda Mohamed took up the opportunity.
Their resulting proposal drew on desk-based research, and their own personal experiences of such work. They provided us with an outline of how such a board or group might function and what we needed to consider in its development to ensure a truly participative process where power was shared with all those involved.
As so often happens with this type of work, when you are learning along with participants, new doors open. We reflected on what we had learnt from the Community Researchers and explored it further in our internal Human Rights Based Audit which we conducted May – October 2022.
From September 2021 to March 2022, we worked with this group of Community Researchers to explore the principles of a Human Rights Based Approach, build an understanding of economic, social and cultural rights, and grow their capacity and skills as they developed new approaches to their own social justice work.