Regional, rural and remote communities in Western Australia continue to experience significant inequities in access to mental health supports. The Great Southern battles workforce shortages, limited non-clinical options and funding models that prioritise metropolitan service delivery, leaving communities underserved and unsupported [1,2]. In Albany, the closure of a key community-based mental health support service has further reduced accessible, preventative and connection-focused care [3].

Regional living exacerbates epistemic injustice faced when seeking support for mental health. As such, Integrity Initiative made a conscious decision to pilot its first fully funded project in Albany.

In early 2026, a team of six young people with lived experience across mental health, disability and youth advocacy sectors generously volunteered their time to deliver twelve community events and distribute 165 care packages over one intensive week.

In celebration of a major milestone, 'Integrity In Albany' will showcase a model for regional engagement and will explore why regional engagement should be embedded from commencement. All the while, it will explore both the challenges and victories faced by an unpaid, youth-led workforce.

Audience members will glimpse into the deep knowledge gathered and will leave with a renewed hope for equality, youth-led impact, community and sustained advocacy despite barriers.

Approximately 1.7M Australians have a psychosocial disability due to a mental health condition that impacts on their ability to participate fully and equally in society – including challenges in finding and maintaining employment. Individual Placement and Support (IPS)- is the most effective employment program that helps people with a serious mental illness find and sustain work. IPS has been successfully expanded into primary health care settings in the UK for broader reach and impact. However, the availability in Australia has declined, with few public mental health programs offering IPS. The establishment of Medicare Mental Health Centres (MMHCs) presents a timely opportunity to integrate evidence‑based employment supports within a new national service platform. This project examines the need, opportunities, barriers, and enablers to implementing IPS in MMHCs and co‑designs IPS adaptations, implementation strategies and an evaluation plan. This presentation will share our preliminary project outcomes. The project hopes to deliver a scalable model and implementation plan for embedding employment supports within MMHCs nationally, addressing a critical service gap for Australians living with mental health conditions.

Topic: Epistemic injustice occurs when an individual’s capacity as a knower is unfairly discounted. For the Family Carer Lived Experience Workforce (FCLEW), fierce advocacy is frequently invalidated and labeled as "trouble," dismissing vital testimony.
Purpose: This presentation intentionally abandons the traditional lecture format to model a relaxed, relational approach to sharing knowledge. Shifting away from rigid hierarchies, we aim to build genuine connection and demonstrate what truly inclusive dialogue looks like. Background: Grounded in Miranda Fricker’s framework and Mad Studies, this work critiques how systems designate privileged individuals as worthy of being listened to, and creates an illusion of inclusion where Lived Experience remains inconsequential.
Methods: To disrupt the "expert at the podium" dynamic, a co-presenter guides a conversational fireside chat interview with the author, nurturing an authentic dialogue about unconscious bias and the systemic silencing of Carers and the FCLEW.
Findings & Implications: The conversational method demonstrates that Lived Expertise is deeply relational and situational. By naming epistemic injustice, we offer a sense of hope, validating historically dismissed voices and directly countering the rigid biomedical frameworks that pathologise advocacy.
Conclusions: Authentic inclusion requires moving beyond hierarchies and biases, it demands deep listening, connection, and the integration of diverse knowledges.

Voting is a fundamental democratic right. However, mental health consumers detained in inpatient units may find themselves unable to vote despite legal eligibility. This presentation examines how electoral systems can unintentionally create barriers to participation in inpatient settings and what this reveals about who democratic systems are designed to serve.

This gap between formal eligibility and practical access is recognised in international human rights frameworks, which emphasise that legal eligibility alone does not guarantee equal political participation. Governments must take proactive steps to remove barriers so people with disability can exercise civic rights in practice. Civic participation is closely linked to social citizenship: recognition as full members of society with the right to voice and belonging. Emerging research indicates many inpatients wish to vote but are unaware of their eligibility or lack practical support, challenging assumptions that low participation reflects incapacity.

Drawing on systemic advocacy undertaken by VMIAC, alongside international comparisons from the United Kingdom and Ireland, this presentation identifies structural barriers leading to disenfranchisement of inpatient consumers. It argues that proactive institutional voting arrangements and supported decision-making are essential to strengthening democratic inclusion, social citizenship, and the broader goals of hope, inclusion, and connection within mental health reform.

Connection is often treated as a by-product of effective practice in mental health care, yet in frontline work, it is frequently the intervention.
Loneliness and social disconnection are increasingly recognised as major public health concerns, linked with poorer mental and physical health outcomes. Within recovery-oriented and psychosocial frameworks, hope, inclusion, and meaningful connection are identified as central to mental health recovery and quality of life (Australian Health Ministers’ Advisory Council, 2021). Despite this, connection is rarely embedded intentionally within everyday practice.
Drawing on frontline experience supporting people with psychosocial disability through the NDIS, this presentation explores human connection as a catalyst for engagement, wellbeing, and recovery. Practice observations highlight how relational moments - being seen, heard, and valued - shape participation, behaviour, and outlook, particularly for people whose voices are often absent from mainstream mental health discourse. Evidence also suggests that fostering hope and optimism can improve mental health outcomes, supporting individuals’ ability to navigate challenges and achieve meaningful goals (Laranjeira & Querido, 2022).
By reframing connection as an active and essential component of mental health care, this work argues for a renewed focus on relational practice as a foundation for hope, inclusion, and recovery within contemporary mental health systems.

Healthy Me is a co-designed, face-to-face physical health initiative developed by Uniting NSW.ACT in 2022 to address the significant physical health inequities experienced by people living with mental illness. Led by a Senior Exercise Physiologist, the program delivers structured, evidence-informed support to improve physical activity, nutrition, health literacy, and recovery engagement.

Delivered within CLS and HASI programs, Healthy Me combines education, personalised goal setting, and incentive-based participation to build motivation and social inclusion. Participants report tangible outcomes including weight loss, increased confidence, and greater community connection, such as attending local gyms and engaging in group activities.

The program aligns with the National Preventive Health Strategy 2021–2030, which prioritises increased physical activity and improved access to healthy diets. Healthy Me translates these national priorities into practical, recovery-oriented action within community mental health settings.

By embedding preventative physical health promotion into everyday service delivery, Healthy Me offers a scalable, relationship-centred model that advances wellbeing while illuminating hope, strengthening inclusion, and deepening connection in recovery-focused care.

Australia does not have a mental health crisis, we have a connection crisis. While distress escalates, our primary response remains hospital beds, clinical throughput and crisis intervention. Psychosocial supports and community-led prevention remain chronically underfunded, leaving people to deteriorate until they qualify as “acute.”
This Ignite presentation, led by the MHLEPQ Lived Experience Affinity Group in collaboration with the National Mental Health Consumer Alliance, challenges the assumption that clinical care is the centre of the system. We introduce “Connection as Prevention” as essential mental health infrastructure, not a wellbeing add-on.
Drawing on evidence linking loneliness, exclusion and marginalisation to poorer outcomes, alongside policy analysis of the NDIS and national reforms, we expose how system design unintentionally produces churn, crisis dependence and revolving-door care.
Through collective inquiry, systems mapping and lived experience leadership, we are developing actionable national advisory recommendations that reposition hope, inclusion and relational continuity as measurable reform priorities.
If we are serious about illuminating hope, inclusion and connection, then we must fund and design for them. Prevention is relational. Community is protective. Connection is infrastructure.

The Mental Health Australia General Clinical Trials Network (MAGNET) is shifting lived experience leadership from emerging practice to a central pillar of clinical trial research design, delivery, and translation to transform outcomes in mental health. The MAGNET Lived Experience Research Partners (LERP) Hub is a new unique registry system for collaboration, offering diverse opportunities for Hope, Inclusion, and Connection across Australia.
This presentation will provide insight and inspiration for how this innovative Hub method will provide hope through practical pathways for people to use their lived experience for employment in clinical trials research. This Hub increases connections throughout Australia for individuals, institutes and organisations to collaborate in shaping new interventions, positively improving clinical trials research outcomes into real world change.
Inclusion is enabled through MAGNET’s commitment to co design, diverse representation, and shared decision making. The MAGNET LERPs and the First Nations Wellness and Governance Group work collaboratively with researchers to ensure clinical trials are culturally grounded, contextually relevant, and scientifically rigorous.
Connection is fostered through authentic partnerships between lived experience researchers and clinical trials teams. This is much more than a research team registry matchmaking service, it’s authentic support for individuals and systems, to improve prevention, diagnosis, interventions and recovery.

Designing Financially Independent Consumer‑Run Organisations: The SUPER CRO 2026 Playbook
Consumer‑run organisations (CROs) have long advanced recovery, rights, and participation in mental health, yet many remain financially vulnerable due to reliance on short‑cycle grants. This Ignite session presents a practical, lived‑experience‑led alternative: a matured “no‑grants” sustainability pathway developed by SUPER CRO Incorporated.
Drawing on three decades of leadership and emerging Australian practice insights, the session outlines a replicable model combining earned income (training, advisory, creative enterprise), micro‑philanthropy, and values‑aligned partnerships. The approach maintains consumer control while strengthening financial resilience and operational agility through lean systems, break‑even program design, and simple governance structures.
SUPER CRO’s experience demonstrates that CROs can deliver impactful programs—training, workshops, and advisory services—while building reserves and maintaining mission integrity without relying predominantly on grants.
The presentation introduces a practical “CRO Sustainability Kit,” including a model canvas, break‑even tools, partnership frameworks, and evaluation templates.
This session argues that sustainability is not a matter of funding luck, but a deliberate design choice—accessible to any CRO committed to independence, accountability, and lived‑experience leadership.

Practice development within lived experience workforces traditionally occurs through formal training, supervision, and organisational learning structures. While these approaches remain essential, they can be limited by organisational boundaries, funding models, and access to training opportunities.

LLE Voices has developed a series of short-form digital scenarios titled “Am I the Asshole? – Lived Experience Edition.” Delivered through TikTok, the series presents everyday peer practice dilemmas drawn from real workforce tensions. Each scenario invites viewers to consider whether a peer worker’s actions were appropriate, prompting reflection on boundaries, mutuality, power dynamics, and the values that underpin lived experience practice.

Importantly, the platform enables something rarely achieved in traditional workforce development spaces: open, cross-sector dialogue. The content is free and accessible across services, regions, and state systems. Peer workers, leaders, and allies engage in discussion through the comment sections, collectively unpacking practice tensions and sharing perspectives grounded in lived experience.

This presentation explores the project as an emerging form of digital practice development. In illuminating hope, inclusion, and connection, the series demonstrates how accessible storytelling and community dialogue can strengthen reflective learning and build a sense of shared professional identity within the lived experience workforce.