Co-producing Lived Experience Leadership resources – a new partnership in mental health

The National Mental Health Consumer and Carer Forum (NMHCCF) and the Mental Health Lived Experience Engagement Network (MHLEEN) are working together to plan and deliver mental health lived experience leadership capacity resources.

Lived experience co-production and leadership has become an increasingly significant feature of the contemporary mental health policy environment.

Currently, multiple organisations and many individuals provide lived experience (consumers, carers and peer workers) input into an array of research, policy, programmatic and practice initiatives. However, the sector lacks co-production maturity and the lived experience workforce is fragmented, variable in quality and lacks a clear understanding of what constitutes lived experience expertise in a system-design sense.

Governments, public mental health services and community managed services also lack co-production capabilities and the approach towards co-design is variable, ad-hoc and largely tokenistic.

Three projects will be undertaken to consolidate and promote existing initiatives and resources to facilitate effective growth of mental health lived experience voices and leadership. They are:

1. the establishment a central national repository of mental health consumer and carer leadership-related knowledge and initiatives to be included on the NMHCCF website
   

1. the co-design of a Mental Health Lived Experience Governance Framework and Toolkit to guide identified priority organisations and jurisdictions when engaging with people with lived experience, and
   

1. review of formal lived experience leadership education and training.

The projects will each have representatives from both NMHCCF and MHLEEN on the project steering groups and are due for completion in mid-2022. Further information can be obtained from the NMHCCF Secretariat at: nmhccf@mhaustralia.org.

National Mental Health Consumer and Carer Forum (NMHCCF)

NMHCCF is a combined voice for mental health consumers and carers. It aims to listen, learn, influence and advocate in matters of mental health reform. Visit www.nmhccf.org.au for more information.

National PHN Mental Health Lived Experience Engagement Network (MHLEEN)

MHLEEN was established in 2018 and aims to embed Lived Experience engagement in the commissioning of primary mental health services, promote and build the peer workforce and have a national network of PHN’s and other stakeholders working together to ensure ‘nothing about us without us’. Visit the MHLEEN page on My Mental Health for more information.