A Lived Experience Advisor is someone with lived experience of mental distress, who is interested in working with our mental health service to provide a perspective and help us improve. You don’t need any prior training.

We want a balance of people with diverse experiences and backgrounds, who can contribute to developing and improving the ways we provide mental health care. We want people with all sorts of experiences, including:

• young people,
• people from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds,
• Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people,
• LGBTI people,
• people with forensic mental health or incarceration experience and,
• older people,
• people in recovery from substance misuse.

Some of the common roles Consumer and Carer Advisors might provide include:

• Participate in and planning, service design or evaluation forums
• Participate in Committees
• Participating in projects, including quality improvement, research or service design
• Being on committees with other consumers and carers
• Providing a consumer perspective as some aspect of the mental health service

Yes. We run training sessions throughout the year. If there is external training that is relevant to your role as an Advisor we can support your attendance. We will also provide you with an orientation booklet and assign you a mentor to support you.

The Mental Health Service Consumer and Carer Remuneration Policy describes what we will remunerate people for. Not all Advisor activities are funded, we will make it clear to you whether an activity is funded or not prior to your participation.

You can participate as little or as much as you want. The most frequent meeting is our Lived Experience Advisory Panel (LEAP), which meets monthly. The Terms of Reference and last few minutes for LEAP are below. If you are keen, you can put your hand up to sit on other committees, like the Multicultural Access Committee. We also have specific projects where a consumer or carer is sought to provide a perspective. Or you can just participate via email if you’d prefer. Please discuss your participation interests with our Senior Peer Support Worker when you meet, you can do as little or as much as you want.

If you have any questions, or would like to know more about becoming a Consumer or Carer advisor, please contact the Senior Peer Support Worker, or Megan Still, Service Planning and Innovation Manager, on megan.still@health.nsw.gov.au or 0417 043 648.