ICM framework

Credibility + Technical Rigor

Pair lived expertise with the training, standards, and support that make good work consistent.

What this helps you see

Credibility helps people build trust and read local conditions. Technical rigor means supporting that knowledge with training, written standards, supervision, evidence, and checks on whether the work is being done well.

The problem underneath

Institutions often ask people to share lived experience without giving them real influence. Programs can also depend on credibility without building the training, supervision, documentation, and measurement needed to deliver the work well.

Illustrative local situation · ICM application

Put the framework against a decision.

A trusted outreach worker can open a conversation with a young person. The worker has no reliable supervisor to call when the situation changes and no clear agreement about a promised referral.

The decision: Pair the worker's relationship with clear boundaries, paid preparation, supervision, and a partner who accepts and follows up on the referral.
Who can act: Program leaders fund supervision and agree on referral steps with service partners. Workers help design a process that fits the work and protects trust.
Check what happened: Review whether contacts lead to consented support, whether workers receive timely backup, and what participants say about the process. Trust alone does not establish an outcome.

Read the workforce support brief

These are parts of the picture to examine, not a complete plan for a jurisdiction or organization. The right design depends on local conditions, authority, resources, and the people who must carry it out.

How the pieces connect

Lived experience can reveal conditions and patterns that administrative data misses.
Training and evidence help practitioners make sound, consistent decisions.
Community and institutional knowledge should inform the same strategy.
People with lived experience need decision-making authority, not ceremonial roles.

Where the work can break down

People with lived experience are invited to speak but not help make decisions.
Programs cannot clearly explain or document how their intervention works.
Technical experts design strategies without local knowledge.
Frontline experience is excluded from evaluation and policy decisions.

Explore the parts behind this idea.

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Field Brief

CVI Workforce Support Is Infrastructure

How training, supervision, trauma support, compensation, and career development affect the quality of violence-intervention services.

Episode Insight

CVI Capacity Has Three Parts

Partnerships, program design, and workforce investment must be built together; strength in one cannot compensate for neglect of the others.

ICM Field Insight

The Messenger May Still Be Healing

Lived experience can strengthen a messenger’s work and also create support needs an employer must plan for.

Episode Insight

Reflective Supervision Is Program Quality

Frontline workers need structured space to examine difficult encounters, emotional exposure, judgment, boundaries, and their own relationship with violence.

Check the evidence for your place.

This framework organizes decisions. Local data and research still have to match the harm, people, and setting.

Open Research & Evidence

Build the approach for your context.

Turning this framework into a workable strategy takes local analysis, decisions about ownership and resources, and a way to test whether the response reaches people as intended.

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