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Ideas of and issues in co-design and co-production including overcoming barriers.
The lived experience workforce has moved from being a grassroots support and activist movement to become the fastest growing workforce within mental health. As lived experience work becomes assimilated within mainstream mental health service delivery, it faces mounting pressure to become more professionalized.
Professionalization has evoked both optimism and fear, with diverging views within the lived experience workforce. In this paper, an assessment of the existing professionalization of the lived experience workforce is undertaken by drawing on theoretical positions and indices of what constitutes a profession. The arguments for and against professionalization are explored to identify the risks, benefits, and considerations for the lived experience workforce. The drive for professionalization has largely occurred due to the clinically focused mental health systems’ valuing of professional identity. The argument in favour of professionalization is motivated by a need for credibility within the views of that system, as well as greater regulation of the workforce. However, tensions are acknowledged with concerns that professionalization to appeal to the clinically focused system may lead to erosion of the values and uniqueness of lived experience work and nullify its effectiveness as an alternative and complementary role. Given mental health nurses are increasingly colleagues and often line managers of lived experience workers, it is important at this stage of lived experience workforce development that mental health nurses understand and are able to advocate for lived experience roles as a distinct professional discipline to help avoid the risks of co-option to more dominant clinical practice.
Peer workers are a relatively new and evolving workforce in Australia. While many peer workers will have formal mental health qualifications or will be acquiring them, the core of their value and competency stems from their lived/living experience of mental illness or supporting someone with mental illness. QLEWN and Brisbane North PPIMS Network, with the support of the QAMH worked together to explore the supply and demand, and most importantly, the quality of available training in Queensland for the relatively new and growing peer workforce.
According to the Queensland Framework for the Development of the Mental Health Lived Experience Workforce, lived experience roles are defined as “people employed specifically to:
The Queensland Lived Experience Workforce Network (QLEWN) is a focused state-wide peak body led by, with and for the Lived Experience workforce within the mental health, alcohol and other drugs and suicide prevention sector. QLEWN is focused on ensuring that the Lived Experience workforce has access to appropriate discipline-specific supervision and support, networking, and professional development opportunities.
QLEWN acts as a united voice for Queensland’s Lived Experience government, non-government and private workforces to drive focused Lived Experience led advocacy and system reform.
In this episode of Better Thinking, Nesh Nikolic speaks with Dr Louise Byrne about the lived experience workforce development, better access to mental health services, and all about mental health issues we have today. Dr Louise Byrne is a Vice-Chancellor’s Senior Research Fellow at RMIT. Previously Louise was awarded a prestigious Fulbright Postdoctoral Scholarship and inaugural RMIT Fulbright fellowship, to conduct research on the Lived Experience mental health workforce in the United States.
Louise’s Fulbright research was based at Yale University, where she holds an adjunct position. Louise is recognised internationally as a thought leader in the area of Lived Experience mental health workforce development. Louise has over 30 journal publications on this topic and has been awarded several times for outstanding contributions to research and teaching, held expert/advisory roles with State and National Mental Health Commissions and led policy development at State and National levels, including the National Lived Experience (Peer) Workforce Development Guidelines. Louise, is a translational researcher with deep knowledge of organisational issues relevant to Lived Experience employment. Louise specialises in highly inclusive engagement and collaboration with diverse stakeholders. Louise's work is informed and shaped by her on-going relationships with industry and a commitment to meaningful, timely and impactful research. Louise's own experiences of mental health diagnosis, service use and periods of healing, as well as working in a variety of Lived Experience roles, form the perspective from which she works.
The mental health consumer and carer identified workforce comprises those consumers and families/ carers who are employed specifically, as noted by the Peer Hub, ‘on the basis of their personal lived experience of mental illness and recovery (consumer peer worker) or their experience of supporting family or friends with mental illness (carer peer worker). This lived experience is an essential qualification for their job, in addition to other qualifications, skills and experience required for the particular role they undertake.
The National Mental Health Consumer and Carer Forum and the National Primary Health Network Mental Health Lived Experience Engagement Network acknowledge the Traditional Custodians of the lands and waters on which we work and live on across Australia. We recognise their continuing connection to land, waters, culture and community. We pay our respects to Elders past and present.
“A lived experience recognises the effects of ongoing negative historical impacts and or specific events on the social and emotional wellbeing of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. It encompasses the cultural, spiritual, physical, emotional and mental wellbeing of the individual, family or community.
“People with lived or living experience of suicide are those who have experienced suicidal thoughts, survived a suicide attempt, cared for someone through a suicidal crisis, been bereaved by suicide or having a loved one who has died by suicide, acknowledging that this experience is significantly different and takes into consideration Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples ways of understanding social and emotional wellbeing.” - Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Lived Experience Centre
We welcome Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people to this site and invite them to provide any feedback or items for inclusion.
We also recognise people with lived and living experience of mental ill-health and recovery and the experience of people who are carers, families, kin, or supporters.