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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 lived and living 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.


Beginning Thursday, June 25, 2026, The Lived Experience Network South East Ontario will be taking a break for the summer months! If you have any questions or concerns to share with our leadership team during this time, please contact Kim Schryburt-Brown at schrybuk@providencecare.ca or call 613-285-4802.

Have a safe and enjoyable summer! We look forward to reconnecting and resuming our important advisory conversations after Monday, August 31, 2026.
 

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September 2026 Advisory Lived Experience Topic: Encouraging Respectful Conversations

September’s Lived Experience Network advisory conversation topic comes from the Person-Centred Language (PCL) Initiative. This initiative is a collaboration between the Behavioural Supports Ontario Provincial Coordinating Office and the Ontario Centres for Learning, Research and Innovation in Long-Term Care at the Schlegel-UW Research Institute for Aging, with support from the PCL Working Group.
PCL is an important component of person-centred care. The words we use, whether spoken or written, can influence how people feel, how they experience care and support, and how they are perceived by others. PCL recognizes the individual first, respecting their identity, strengths, preferences, and lived experiences. As we explore opportunities to update the PCL resources, including the PCL eLearning Course, we are seeking feedback from people with lived experience to help inform this work.
Your perspectives will help us better understand the impact of language, identify areas for improvement, and ensure these resources remain relevant, meaningful, and reflective of the experiences of the people they are intended to support.

Whether or not you are familiar with PCL, your insights and experiences are valuable. We invite residents, family members, care partners, and others with lived experience to join us for a conversation about the role language plays in your healthcare journey.

Come prepared to discuss the following:

1. Are you familiar with the term "person-centred language"? What does it mean to you?
2. What words or phrases have you heard in health care that made you feel respected, valued, and understood?
3. Are there words or phrases you have heard that felt less respectful, less person-centred, or did not reflect how someone would want to be seen or spoken about?
4. Have you noticed positive changes over time in the use of person-centred language?
5. When you hear language that is not person-centred, do you feel comfortable and equipped to address it? Why or why not?

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 lived and living 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 lived and living 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.