PRICE Training Transforming Lives Conference: reflections on a remarkable day

Nick Burnett shares his reflections on our Transforming Lives Conference 2026

Last week, we held our Transforming Lives 2026 conference. The posts from speakers and participants since have been wonderful to read, and I wanted to pause with the day a little longer than our busy lives usually allow.

Thank you to Sharon Gray OBE, Dr Eric Baskind , Andrew Willetts , Hayley Tasker , Lee Hollins, and James Ridley . Each of them brought depth, rigour, and genuine commitment to the day. The quality of thinking in that room was something I won’t forget quickly.

And a particular thank you to Ellie Taylor .

Ellie shared her story with honesty and courage. She reminded everyone in that room why this work matters. Not in an abstract, policy-document way. In a way that cuts through everything else and reminds you what is actually at stake.

From the plenary sessions, four things stayed with me:

• The question of appropriate risk. Not how to eliminate it, but how to think about it well. Risk is not the enemy of good care. Getting risk wrong is.
• What makes a great staff member. Not a checklist. A set of qualities that, when you name them, everyone in the room recognises immediately.
• How we build cultures we actually want to be part of. Because culture is not a strategy document. It is what people experience on a Tuesday afternoon when things are hard.
• And, prompted in no small part by Ellie’s contribution: how do we include the voice of those with lived experience more consistently, both as training providers and as settings? A powerful keynote is not enough. It should be a prompt to go further.

A few additional places we continue to ponder on are:

• Involve lived experience consultants in the design of training, not just as contributors to a single session.
• Co-produce the case studies and scenarios we use, so they reflect what people actually experience rather than what we assume they do.
• Build feedback structures that go beyond end-of-course surveys and create genuine, ongoing dialogue with those who have been on the receiving end of the approaches we teach.
• Create a real seat at the table in leadership forums and governance, not a token slot on the agenda.

Beyond the sessions, there was something else I valued enormously: the chance to connect and reconnect with people who are all, in their different ways, committed to transforming lives. That is not a small thing.

We are already thinking about 2027. If this year is anything to go by, it will be worth the wait.

We’d be curious to hear how does your organisation currently include lived experience voices in training design or strategic planning, and what has made the biggest difference?

Published 30 April 2026