This presentation will look at the development of a tool that is being developed by Mental Health Carers NSW (MHCN) . The tool has been developed during the statewide meeting of the Mental Health Carers Connections Meeting, a monthly meeting to support the Mental Health Carers Advocacy Network (MHCAN) registry.

The tool builds on earlier work done by Vital Health Care and Carers NSW that looks at the Carers Journey from a mental health carers perspective. The MHCN Mental Health Carers Journey has 5 stages and experiences, identified common experiences and remedies that mental health carers go through as they interact with the Mental Health System in NSW.

The 5 stages include:

Hidden Carer
Conscious Carer
Competent Carer
Confident Carer
Carer Champion

During the presentation, we will look at the process we went through to get an agreement with members of the MHCAN registry about the wording included in the tool.

We will also show how this tool has assisted MHCN to ensure we not only have lived experience involved in our consultation to develop policy for the NSW Mental Health System is that we have Lived Expertise of the particular issue we are consulting on at the time.

Mental Health and Wellbeing Connect Centres offer a new lived experience-led support for the families, carers, kin and supporters of people who experience mental ill-health and/or substance use challenges. The Centres are a recommendation of the Victorian Royal Commission into Victoria’s Mental Health System, with Mind Australia leading the establishment of two Centres in regional and rural areas in Victoria.
Recruiting a trained family and carer lived experience workforce presented a challenge as this workforce is not well established in community-based settings, especially in rural and regional areas. Due to geographical barriers to accessing training and professional development opportunities, we designed a program to support staff to turn their lived experience into expertise and deliver safe and quality support to families and carers.
This presentation will outline the implementation of a comprehensive training and development program, informed by the National Lived Experience Workforce Guidelines. The training includes: foundational training in social connection, relational recovery, and Intentional Peer Support, as well as Carer Perspective Supervision and co-reflection. Process related outcomes from the training program will be presented. The impact of this regional and rural training and development program will be further evaluated to understand family and carer lived experience practice.

Family/carer lived experience (family/carer LE) work is a growing discipline within the Australian mental health sector (Rising Together Action Group, 2022), although the nature of these workforces varies between states. This presentation delves into the family/carer LE workforce in Queensland drawing from the findings from an ALIVE seed-funded project that partially replicated the Victorian “Rising Together” study. The Queensland project was instigated by a family/care LE advocate, co-designed with family/carer LE workers and involved a state-wide survey and a series of focus groups with family/carer LE workers employed in Queensland. This paper will offer insights into the preliminary findings of the project, focusing on the experiences and challenges encountered by the family/carer LE workforce in Queensland. This paper will also present a comparison between the key issues experienced by Victorian and Queensland family/carer LE workers with a discussion of what this means for the development of the family/carer LE workforce on a national level. Attendees will gain an understanding of the significance of co-design and lived experience leadership in research, and the impact of regional differences in implementation and outcomes of such explorations.

Through forums, surveys and other feedback opportunities, we have learned there is a significant lack of recognition for carers' roles and the challenges they encounter. Additionally, there is limited awareness and promotion of the services available to them, insufficient involvement of family members and limited educational programs for carers (Olasoji, Maude & McCauley, 2017). Progress in addressing these issues has been slow, despite the implementation of the Carers Recognition Act, policy statements and guidelines.

The Mental Health Strategy and Planning branch see this as an opportunity to reset our approach and diligently learn from the experiences and insights of carers who are integral to supporting our health system. Our efforts will be focused on incorporating the triangle of care as a central aspect of our approach to ensure that the voices of carers are genuinely heard and taken into consideration.

In this presentation, we will highlight the importance of elevating the lived experience perspective, fostering relationships, establishing culturally safe environments and taking actionable steps to address feedback. We will talk about the participatory design approach we used to more actively engage carers to design services that better meet their needs and expectations through the application of their knowledge and experiences.

By working together, we can tailor initiatives that are meaningful, inclusive, easily accessible, and appropriate for mental health carers. This collaborative approach will not only help improve the integration of services, but also strengthen the South Australian mental health system and facilitate better connections with other sectors.

Learning objective: Participants will gain a better understanding of the barriers and challenges experienced by mental health carers in South Australia and the importance of creating a safe and inclusive environment to share and leverage ideas with mental health carers.

Learning objective: Participants will learn about the multidisciplinary approach we have taken to bring together knowledge and expertise from our lived experience team as well as leveraging effective project management strategies to build capacity and capability to better support the South Australian community.

Learning objective: Participants will hear about how we will use learnings from this project to inform future initiatives and practices with the aim of improving culture and strengthening partnerships across mental health services.

As more supports for carers are being implemented within healthcare systems it becomes important to consider how stigma and stereotypes around the carer identity act as barriers to access. Many who take on a carer role don’t identify as a ‘carer’ or may not realise that this term would apply to them. Conversely, there are some who do identify as carers, but struggle to gain access within current systems. Gender, age, heteronormativity and ableism all play a role in the way the carer identity is conceptualised. The resources and programs available to support carers are likely underutilised by those individuals as a result.

How a service defines ‘carer’ and how that carer is identified has an impact on who is gaining access to the supports available. How can we, as mental health services, better identify and support the ‘hidden carers’ who may fall outside the stereotypes associated with the ‘carer’ role? By looking at the carer identity through an intersectional lens we can help facilitate access for carers who may otherwise feel marginalised from carer services.