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Lived Experience Network - South East Ontario Advisory Zoom Chats

You’re invited to join us via Zoom for an Advisory Lived Experience chat. These advisory conversations build an ongoing and sustainable communication bridge that will facilitate active and meaningful participation of persons with living and lived experiences across South East Ontario and those developing, providing and evaluating services for people impacted by dementia and similar diagnoses across the entire continuum of care.

Our Lived Experience Facilitator, Sharon Osvald, will guide these conversations. If you haven’t already signed up for our e-newsletter, you can do so by clicking here.

Thank You!
A big thank you to all the participants who have shared their insights in our advisory Lived Experience Network conversations - both in our Zoom meetings and through your emails and phone calls.

Be sure to read the latest Lived Experience Perspectives e-newsletter for a summary of these conversations and the most recent information. This and all past conversation summaries are available on our “Lived Experience Perspectives” page.




After taking a break for the summer months, The Lived Experience Network of South East Ontario would like to extend a warm "Welcome Back!"  We look forward to the upcoming day-time and evening advisory conversations this fall. Please let us know if you can make it. 


We also invite you to email Sharon Osvald at sosvald@alzking.com if you would like to catch up before our meeting, or if you prefer to send your responses and answers to the chat topic by email. We look forward to being part of these rich and impactful conversations.

 

October 2026 Advisory Lived Experience Topic: Making the First Connection: Establishing Trust

October's advisory conversation topic has been suggested by Providence Care Seniors Mental Health Behavioural Support Services and reflects a challenge facing many healthcare and community support providers across our region.

When people are referred to a service, the first contact is often a phone call. Providers make multiple attempts to connect but may not receive a response despite leaving several messages. At the same time, many people are being encouraged to avoid answering calls from unknown numbers because of scams, fraud, and increasingly sophisticated AI-generated communications. They are also reluctant to open email attachments, click on links or share health care information.

This creates a challenge: how do we safely and effectively connect with people who are waiting for services?
Come prepared to share your ideas, experiences and recommendations on how we can create a referral process that is both safe and effective. 

We look forward to learning from your experiences and perspectives.


 

Please read before joining:

Lived Experience Network South East Ontario – Approach to Engagement

Meeting Expectations: Lived Experience Network South East Ontario advisory meetings will be a safe and confidential space where participants are treated with respect and courtesy.

1. Swearing, name-calling, aggressive language or assigning blame are not welcome.
2. Participants will be provided equal time to share their responses.
3. Participants will attempt to share feedback that relates primarily to the advisory topic to ensure everyone has an opportunity to share.
4. Participants will respect each other’s privacy and confidentiality. Participants are asked not to share personal information discussed in advisory chats. The Lived Experience Facilitator will provide a summary with anonymized quotes to protect the privacy of both the advisors and community partners.

To protect everyone’s privacy, please do NOT share:

1. The names of staff or organizations when sharing your lived experience feedback.
2. The full names of the people you are supporting.
3. Any personal health information (yours or others).
4. Your last name. Please only list your first name under your video. Reach out to the Lived Experience Facilitator if you need help with this.

Our Role: The role of the Lived Experience Network South East Ontario is to host intentional advisory conversations with health care and community supports partners about improving the living and lived experiences of people with dementia and similar diagnoses and their care partners across our region. Although, the Lived Experience Network provides support and information to our participants, we are not a support group.

We understand advisory stories shared will not always be positive. We invite you to share your lived and living experiences, ideas for necessary change, along with examples of good care in action through a lens of hope.  We act as advisors with the goal of enhancing the system of care by sharing our lived experience perspective. 

We are not an ombudsman; we do not and cannot directly lobby or act on behalf of individual members and their experiences. Our role is to report to the health care and community supports system, rather than report on it, acting as a safe place to bring questions and engage in active collaboration with those who want to hear honest feedback, shared in a healthy, hopeful, and productive manner.

While we acknowledge the value and importance of advocacy, we are an advisory group, not an advocacy group. We collect living and lived experience feedback which we distribute it in quarterly reports called Lived Experience Perspectives and, on our website, so others can implement that advice or share as experience-based perspectives when advocating for change.

Our goal is: Exchanging Knowledge, Partnering for Change.

• LEN Approach to Engagement Slides  

We are happy that you have joined us. We believe to create meaningful services and supports, the voice of those using these services must be heard. Thank you for being a part of that voice today.
 

Want to Share Your Lived Experience?

Come to our next Zoom Chat or contact Sharon Osvald:
📧 sosvald@alzking.com
📞 (343) 645-6240
 

Looking Ahead

The Lived Experience Network will host six Zoom Advisory conversations a year—in February, April, May, September, October, and November. Each topic will be discussed in both an afternoon and an evening session.

Feedback from these conversations will be compiled into a quarterly report called Lived Experience Perspectives and shared confidentially with Lived Experience Network participants and health care and community support partners to support planning, service delivery, and system evaluation.