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Forum for Accessing Community Experience (FACE)

FACE groupBirmingham City University’s Forum for Accessing Community Experience (also known as FACE). FACE are dedicated to enriching healthcare education from a patient or carer's perspective.

What is FACE?

FACE operates through casual workers who have experience in living with disabilities and using health or social care services: whether they have disabilities themselves or are carers for those in need. We call these workers Experts by Experience (or EBEs for short) and they engage with both the healthcare students and faculty in a variety of ways.

What do we do?

  • We teach students to feel comfortable working with different people
  • We want to develop a group of people with a lived experience
  • We inform the health and social care curriculum
  • We shape the future direction of courses
  • We help recruit the right people to become health and social care professionals

How do we do this?

We share our lived experience with students. We do this through example:

  • Lectures 
  • Workshops 
  • Role play and simulation 
  • Meetings at the University 
FACE - lectures
FACE - workshops
FACE - role play
FACE - meetings

What benefits are there from joining us?

  • You will make a difference to how professionals treat us in the future.
  • It gives you a sense of purpose.
  • It makes you feel good to as you meet new people.
  • It makes you feel like you are putting something back into society.
  • It gets you out of the house.
  • It makes you feel great as you are actually making a difference.

What value does FACE offer your education?

  • FACE enhances your learning and practice through the sharing of experiences, knowledge and ideas
  • It gives you a unique viewpoint into how patients and service users experience and interact with our healthcare systems
  • FACE offers you hands on experience in your field of practice via simulation workshops with our experts
  • Allows you to think more broadly on the impact your practice can have on patient’s lives

 Zaynab Sohawon is a self-published author, and one of our Experts by Experience, who share their experiences of health care services with us to help improve our teaching. 

Read her story 

Contact us