Working together to improve and develop services

Your voice matters

At Hearing Dogs for Deaf People, we believe all of our services (hearing dog and Hearing Link Services) are stronger when they’re shaped by the people who use and deliver them.

Your lived experience with hearing loss is invaluable, and we want to understand what works, what doesn’t, and what could be better.

We’re inviting you, our Peer Support Volunteers, to be part of shaping how our services develop and improve. We call this co-creation.

We have created some guidelines to explain what co-creation means in our organisation and how we’ll work together with you. If this sounds like something you would like to find out more about, please read on for details of how to express your interest.

What we mean by co-creation

We value your insight and experience.

Your views matter. You bring lived experience, fresh perspectives, and real understanding of what it’s like to use our services and be a person living with hearing loss. We want to create genuine opportunities for you to share your experiences, insights and ideas to help us provide the best possible emotional and practical support.

You’ll help shape our services

We’re inviting you into the process because your voice adds real value. Whilst our Service Design and Development Team will lead co-creation activities, your ideas and experiences will help shape the direction we take. Every contribution helps us build something better.

We’ll listen carefully and make thoughtful decisions

We may not be able to act on every idea, but everything you share will be carefully considered. Our role is to balance different views, needs and practical constraints – including our service strategy, available resources and budget, for example. We’ll always be clear about what’s open to shaping and what may be fixed. We’ll also let you know where your input can make the biggest difference. This helps us work creatively within our boundaries to achieve the best possible results together. Wherever possible, we’ll explain how your contributions influenced the outcome – and be honest about what we could or couldn’t take forward.

Your involvement is always your choice

You don’t have to take part in co-creation to be a valued volunteer. It’s one way to get involved, and we appreciate your time, ideas and energy whenever you choose to share them. There will be future opportunities to get involved in the delivery of the Hearing Link Services we create and improve.

We’ll work together in ways that are respectful and inclusive

We’ll make it as easy as possible for you to take part, whether online or in person, and we’ll listen with care. We welcome different perspectives, and we’ll create manageable group sizes so everyone can contribute meaningfully. We aim to create a space where everyone feels safe, heard and respected.

We’ll use different approaches depending on what we’re working on

We’ve got lots of ideas we want to explore. How we work together effectively, and the best approaches will vary depending on what we’re working on. Sometimes that might mean workshops to explore ideas, one-to-one interviews to dig deeper into experiences, group conversations to share different perspectives, surveys or testing early versions of services to see how they work in practice. There will be a mixture of virtual sessions and in-person sessions (when possible). We’ll endeavour to choose the method that gives you the best opportunity to contribute your insights.

Ready to get involved?

If you’re interested in being part of our co-creation work, we’d love to hear from you. Fill in our quick survey to let us know your interest and if you have particular areas of development you would like to get involved in.

We look forward to hearing from you all. Together, we can ensure our services continue to make a real difference to people affected by hearing loss.