6.4 Support for employed EBE (Flanders)

Support for Certified Experts by Experience and Their Workplaces (Organisations and Tandem Partners)

The non-profit organisation deLink supports certified experts by experience in their work trajectories. They provide support for experts by experience, their supervisors, and tandem partners. They set up trajectories with organisations to support them in their search for meaningful collaboration with experts by experience and the integration of experiential knowledge into their operations.

For graduates, return days were organised where alumni could exchange experiences, where deLink explored what they could still mean for them, and where certified experts by experience could be specifically referred or advised on job applications, etc.

There is also an offer of professionalisation trajectories for employed experts by experience. The modules tandem relationship and professional dialogue apply to employed experts by experience, their colleagues, and supervisors. Modules announced on their website are:

• An intervision ‘experts by experience in the field’. In small groups, participants exchange how they bring experiential knowledge into their own organisation, how they can continue to expand their own experiential knowledge and expertise, and how they deal with specific challenges in the field. There is room for dialogue and personal reflection with the aim of deepening and broadening one’s own perspective.
• ‘Strengthening the tandem relationship’. A two-day training for employed experts by experience and tandem partners. Based on questions from work practice, they work specifically on strengthening communication skills and a basic attitude of openness, equality, and critical awareness. The goal is to strengthen collaboration and the possibility of growing together in professionalism.
• ‘The professional dialogue’ is a one-day training. The professional dialogue can be described as a conversation between colleagues or between colleagues and clients about goals to be achieved. It is about making room for (new) insights that arise in the exchange between colleagues or between colleagues and clients with different frames of reference. In the dialogue, mutual learning occurs that strengthens all In this training, they explore the characteristics and application possibilities of a dialogue that contributes to the professional development of the conversation partners.
• A four-day trajectory ‘policy for experts by experience’ is a continuing education offer for employed experts by experience, which delves deeper into elements of policy work, policy influence, and action at micro, meso and macro level

In addition, deLink has also developed a support offer for organisations that (will) work with experts by experience. For them, tailor-made trajectories are developed. They discuss with the organisation what they expect from experts by experience, what they need as a team, which objectives they pursue and which tasks they foresee. Through a coaching process, the team is prepared for the cooperation with an expert by experience. deLink has already done this with specific departments at universities of applied sciences. Working together in co-creation in education or research is not easy. deLink provides:

• Coaching in collaborating with experts by experience
• Looks at what experts by experience can contribute in education, for students in vulnerable positions, and in research
• Providing basic training on poverty and in-depth intervision for teachers and students
• Providing lessons g. in teacher training on communication with parents in vulnerable situations (For more information: https://www.delink.website/aanbod)

7 topics in the Toolkit

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Read more about the seven work packages

1. Key educational principles 
2. Guide with didactical and pedagogical methods 
3. Training programme for lecturers
4. A support kit for experts by experience
5. Framework for integrating experiential knowledge
6. Digital forum with state-of-the-art literature
7. Monitoring and evaluation 

Articles:
A support kit for experts by experience