Building the Lived Experience Workforce in Central Australia
Mental Health Association of Central Australia (MHACA) has offered psychosocial support services and health promotion since 1992. MHACA’s strong commitment to valuing and recognising expertise equally, led to a workforce development project to ensure service delivery occurs through the lens of lived experience and relevant to the local context. A team from Charles Darwin University conducted the project using a NT PHN grant.
The outcome - ‘Lived Experience Workforce Development Framework’ - supports people with lived experience to engage in voluntary and paid co-production activities within MHACA. It details goals, strategies and practical examples related to leadership and workplace culture, training and development, policies and planning, and building the local service system. The project process included a literature review, all-staff workshop, and in-depth interviews. An Advisory committee reviewed preliminary findings and helped shape the Framework’s format and content.
This participatory approach resulted in high organisational ownership of the Framework which ensures MHACA’s existing employment of Peer Workers will continue in line with national recommendations and research findings. This includes strategies and approaches that are contextually relevant such as reflective, culturally safe and trauma informed practice. It also includes strategies for developing a ‘Community of Practice’ for the local human service sector, and broadening community understanding of Lived Experience. The project process and outcome may be useful for organisations operating in rural/remote contexts wishing to boost recruitment and retention of a Lived Experience workforce.

In line with the Royal Commission into Victoria’s Mental Health System, Final Report, there is a growing need for Area Mental Health Services to place lived and living experience at the centre of service design & delivery (State of Victoria, 2021). Achieving this requires services to go beyond the traditional levels of lived and living experience participation (Roper, Grey & Cadogan, 2018). One Melbourne mental health service co-designed a training program which targeted senior leaders and supported the development of their understanding of co-production as a method to support service transformation.

Driven by the lived experience workforce, a suite of learning resources which were co-planned, co-designed, co-delivered and co-evaluated. These resource support clinical leaders and the lived and living experience workforce's understanding of what co-production is and is not. Workshops provided participants with an awareness of how to practically apply co-production, or other forms of participation, to support service transformation.

This oral presentation will co-deliver reflections of one area mental health service during the design and delivery of introduction to co-production training and how this work celebrated our differences and supported a movement to true co-production.

"One must face chaos to give birth to a star” Friedrich Nietzsche

The Lived and Living Experience (LLE) Technical Expert Hub (the Hub) was designed bring a mix of LLE discipline expertise and leadership to the development of Victoria’s first LLE Leadership Strategy. A star was born from the process, rather than the project itself. What started as a hub to service one government contract now has a broader application across social, community and human services.

An innovative collaborative model, expanding on the ground prepared by the Royal Commission into Victoria’s Mental Health System and the Our Future project, the Hub model represents a step change for co-production work between Governments and LLE communities.

This presentation provides an overview of the Hub model and how this partially planned experiment in self-organising chaos led to the development of a bespoke and powerful community. While effective in the assigned priority project, ultimate success of the hub was realised in the evolution of the hub as a community and its role in empowering emerging LLE leaders. A focus on common ground, connection, open communication and collaboration led to the unification of cross-discipline LLE experts for a shared purpose – one voice with collective impact.

Embedding the voices of consumers in leadership, design and delivery was a key recommendation from the Royal Commission into Victoria’s Mental Health System. St Vincent’s Hospital Melbourne (SVHM) Area Mental Health and Wellbeing Service identified the need to create a consumer engagement strategy. To elevate consumer perspectives, this strategy was co-created with past and current consumers of our service. This is the first time that SVHM has utilised a solely consumer-led approach to strategic service development. This presentation celebrates this difference.

This presentation will explain our approach and results of the co-created consumer engagement strategy. The development of this strategy was led by the consumer Lived/Living Experience Workforce (LLEW) and included significant input from the LLEW leadership team. The consumer voice was obtained through a series of focus groups. Focus groups found common ground through exploring the meaning of engagement and creating shared recommendations. Graphic facilitation, used in every focus group as an innovative tool for engagement, will be explained and demonstrated.

Though the strategy is still shifting and changing, our co-creation journey including our successes, challenges and lessons learned will be presented as a way of encouraging other services to develop their own consumer engagement strategy in their workplace.

The Consumer Choice Pilot was a Victorian Department of Health funded initiative aimed at improving meaningful choice for consumers. The pilot was aligned with the Royal Commission into Victoria’s Mental Health System Final Report recommendations.

A key Pilot objective was to implement a range of additional therapeutic supports and treatment options for consumers, whilst promoting choice.

This presentation focuses on the implementation of a Narrative Therapy group within the context of an Acute Adult Inpatient Unit, including:

- How the group was established
- Opportunities and challenges associated with delivery
- Feedback provided by consumers

Narrative Therapy was identified as an intervention that could support the aims of the Pilot - diversity of choice, agency, and self-determination within this context.

It represents an alternative to clinical, skills based groups and is based on the idea that our lives are made up of stories, or narratives, that shape our unique identity and perception of the world.

This consumer-led approach empowers participants by valuing their experiences and stores, enhancing control and agency over their lives and recovery journey. As an intervention, it focuses on skills and resilience, building on existing strengths and knowledge and acknowledging the participants capabilities and potential.