The Problem With Professionalising Lived Experience

Find out more in my Substack articale:

https://open.substack.com/pub/lucywishart/p/the-problem-with-professionalising?r=71cs29&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true

Lived experience is increasingly welcomed into research, service design, and healthcare training. People are invited in as Experts by Experience, and this is often framed as progress.

But professionalising lived experience doesn’t dismantle the injustice that made it necessary in the first place. It changes the conditions under which it is allowed to be heard.

When credibility depends on training, titles, and professional language, lived experience is no longer valued on its own terms. It is reshaped to fit existing systems rather than those systems being asked to change.

This creates a paradox. Without professionalisation, lived experience is dismissed as anecdotal or unreliable. With professionalisation, the person’s ongoing needs, identities, and vulnerabilities as a service user are often overlooked or erased. The role becomes visible; the person becomes less so.

The result is not justice, but assimilation.

Instead of asking why lived experience is distrusted, the system asks people to adapt themselves until they are acceptable. The stigma remains. The hierarchy remains. Only the terms of participation shift.