HOME Project – Hear of My Experience
People who have faced homelessness or housing insecurity are coming together to make sure their voices are heard and to make a difference.
This project was completed in December 2025.
Together we are:
Communicating: Making sure our voices are heard and valued.
Connecting: Learning from and respecting each other’s experience.
Advocating: Working with organisations to build their understanding.
The HOME Project is a space where people who have experienced homelessness can come together to make decisions. We would like to:
- Speak publicly and to the media about our housing experiences
- Work effectively with government and non-government agencies
- Influence housing policy and service design
- Change the public’s ideas about housing stress and homelessness
- Educate others through our stories
- Develop a platform to highlight our strengths and knowledge
- Mentor and support each other in our work
Together, we are improving housing policies and support services, by listening to the people they impact the most.
The History of the HOME (Hear Of My Experience) Project
2018: The HOME (Hear of My Experience) Project began with funding from a Department of Finance Capacity Building Grant. Seventeen people with lived experience of homelessness and/or housing insecurity were the original participants in the project.
2018: The HOME Project aims:
- To engage in capacity building and co-design training with HOME lived experience advocates by increasing their skills, knowledge, and ability to partner in a co-design process and advocacy; and
- To produce the Lived Experience Co-Design Toolkit to assist government and organisations to better engage with people with lived experience to improve the service system.
2019: Workshops began. The original HOME team met for eight three-hour workshops from September 2019 until January 2020. These workshops were designed to build skills in people with lived experience to bring their knowledge to the sector and develop a toolkit to support the sector to engage with people with lived experience.
2020: Workshops completed. The participants received training in a range of areas from Lived Experience storytelling to policy formulation and media. The co-design team shared information in these workshops about what people with lived experience needed from the sector to engage effectively and in a safe and supported way.
2020: Development of the Lived Experience Co-Design Toolkit commenced – a set of resources that help organisations better engage people with lived experience. The resources included the participants themselves, who would deliver the workshops to the sector.
2020: Key learnings for Shelter WA – the need for organisational readiness. An investment of time, financial resources and supports are needed to fulfil Lived Experience engagement work well.
2020: Lotterywest COVID-19 Relief Grant funding allowed the development of a Lived Experience Framework. Shelter WA engaged two of the original HOME participants to produce the Framework. The Framework is an overarching guide that supports the sector to embed lived experience into their practice. Led by people with lived experience of homelessness, the development of this framework also included people from the Department of Communities and service providers. The Shelter WA Linked Experience Framework can be accessed and downloaded here.
2021: The HOME Lived Experience Toolkit and Framework are launched in August. Many of the lessons learned along the way were reflected on and communicated with transparency and honesty at this launch, including the need for trauma informed practice, adequate resourcing and support, and organisational readiness. You can see the video recording of the launch here.
2021: The HOME Project’s Artist-in-Residence program, STREET TO STREET, is launched in December, featuring contemporary multidisciplinary artist Deborah Ralph-Kafarela. The 16-week residency involved workshops with 89 people with lived experience of homelessness, held at St. Patrick’s Community Support Centre, Ruah Community Services and Uniting WA’s Tranby Centre. The STREET TO STREET residency culminated in an extraordinary 50-piece sculptural installation giving voice to people with Lived Experience of housing insecurity and homelessness through the art making process. You can read more about STREET TO STREET here.
2021: The project aims proved to be bigger than the initial two grants allowed. Continuing the learning, Shelter WA provided financial support to continue the preparation needed to better embed Lived Experience into all of the organisation’s work, specifically through the development of presentation information for the Toolkit to be introduced to the sector.
2021: Shelter WA received funding from the Sisters of St John of God to continue the HOME Project. It was important that Shelter WA incorporated the learnings from the past in its progression of the project. When working with people who have experienced systemic trauma there needs to be care and time to build relationships and trust. The need for the right people and processes to be in place was important. Much of 2021 and 2022 was spent on establishing a strong foundation for the project to continue within Shelter WA, based on the evaluation of the HOME Project to date.
2022-2023: Shelter WA has engaged people who participated in the initial stages of the project as Lived Experience consultants, to advise and support the organisation in laying a strong foundation for the project to continue. Shelter WA included Lived Experience expertise in the recruitment of the Senior Project Officer and the ten new members of the co-design team.
2023: Shelter WA negotiated contracts that would help build the needed supports into the next phase of the HOME Project. This included engaging an external evaluator, ongoing peer support and cultural support, and an external facilitator.
2023: The Lived Experience Consultants to the HOME Project, Jonathan Shapiera, Trish Owen, Allan Connolly and Deborah Ralph-Kafarela, remain engaged through undertaking research on homelessness, presenting a history of the project to the new co-design team, preparing material for the updated webpages and reminding us, through the sharing of their art works, of the importance of having a safe place to call home.
2024: It is now the new co-design group’s role to take the lessons that have gone before and design the way in which embedding Lived Experience expertise across the sector will continue. The first meeting of the new HOME co-design group was held in February 2024, and will continue for 18 months until June 2025.
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