The Netherlands - Herkwartiermaken at experiential expertise is foundation work

The Netherlands - Herkwartiermaken at experiential expertise is foundation work. The Dutch mental health provider Reinier van Arkel has been working with experience experts for a decade. What began as pioneering work has now entered a new phase: strengthening the foundation. Through a joint trajectory with Movisie, the organization is engaging in herkwartiermaken, a process to revisit, reinforce, and sustain the way experiential knowledge is embedded in care and policy. As Suzanne Haneveer-Leemans, advisor for recovery and experiential expertise at Reinier van Arkel, explains: “We are now consolidating what we’ve built. The management and board are supportive, but by putting our vision and agreements on paper, we make this way of working less dependent on changing leadership.” Jeroen de Haan-Rißmann, senior experience expert at Movisie and initiator of the concept herkwartiermaken, describes it as “ensuring the circle keeps turning, so that attention to experiential expertise remains alive and lasting within the organization.” This process reflects a deeper cultural shift: sharing power, strengthening recovery-oriented care, and embedding lived experience into the very fabric of organizational practice.