A History of the lived experience workforce in Victoria Tip Sheet has been put together by the Consumer and Carer Workforce Development Team

People with lived experience were first employed in Victorian Mental Health services in 1996. Four roles were created at Royal Melbourne Hospital following the completion of a seminal project: Understanding and Involvement Project. (Epstein & Wadsworth, 1994). These roles, originally called Consumer Staff Collaboration Consultants were initiated in 1996 to lead quality improvement projects in each area mental health service. Within a short time, the funding for the positions became recurrent and the title shortened to Consumer Consultants. These roles were often isolated and evolved in unique ways that were dependent on the management of the service, the consumers’ needs within the service, and the individuals filling the roles.

In 1999 a project was undertaken at Maroondah Hospital that explored the support needs of carers. The project, Carers Offering Peers Early Support or COPES, initiated carer peer support work across both the clinical service and one of the local community services (EACH). In 2000 St Vincent’s Hospital introduced the first Carer Consultant and in 2002, the Department of Health permitted services to utilize the Carer Brokerage Fund to employ Carer Consultants in each service. Not all service took up this opportunity and in 2009 the Department reviewed the Carer Brokerage Fund, redistributing it to services and implementing recurrent funding for each service to employ Carer Consultants.

North West Mental Health Network, in 2002, implemented the first leadership role for consumer workers. The Consumer Advisor position sat on the executive team and while initially was only for 2 hours a month over time it grew to the current role of .6 EFT. In 2005 Southern Health introduced a Director, Consumer and Carer Relations, this full time executive management position managed the lived experience workforce, led the strategic development of consumer and family/carer participation and involvement, and managed the brokerage funds and consumer complaints.

Around 2007-8 North West Mental Health Network and Southern Health initiated small projects exploring peer support in inpatient settings, but these projects did not gain recurrent funding and were ceased. In the following years clinical services undertook more explorations of peer support but with no identified funding stream these failed to gain ground. Austin Health also introduced a senior position of Consumer and Carer Coordinator in 2010, with management of the Consumer and Carer Consultants.

During this time several services in the community, at the time called Psychiatric Disability Rehabilitation and Support services, now called Mental Health Community Support Services (MHCSS), began to employ consumer workers in peer support roles. In 2006 the Personal Helpers and Mentors (PhaMs) program was introduced and the employment of peer support workers in MHCSS significantly increased.

Victoria’s 10 year mental health plan and its Mental health workforce strategy (released November 2015) identified the importance of growing and developing the lived experience workforce. In 2016, the Department of Health funded a new program, the Expanding Post Discharge Support, which has resulted in a rapid growth in the lived experience workforce in clinical mental health services.

With the implementation of the NDIS, and the lack of a clearly identified funding line for Peer Support Work, organisations in the community sector are exploring how to utilise dedicated lived experience roles. Many services are replacing lived experience positions with generic support worker roles thereby reducing their complement of dedicated lived experience workers.

The Tip Sheet authors wish to acknowledge to Vrinda Edan for her contribution to this tip sheet.

See the full Version 1, 06/08/2018 Tip Sheet, together with a timeline of the movement here