The Year 2 Lived Experience Advisory Group (LEAG) has recently received recognition at Mental Health Services (theMHS) conference with a Convenor’s Choice award for their abstract submission ‘Shifting the Landscape for Suicide Prevention in NSW – Year 2 lived experience monitoring and evaluation co-design project’.
WentWest employee Jay Gardener was supported to attend the conference through contributions from the Mental Health Commission of NSW (MHC)and a bursary donated via event sponsors of TheMHS.
This work was led by the LEAG and the MHC. Their contributions are part of the Monitoring and Reporting Plan for the Framework, which aims to show year-by-year insights of suicide prevention efforts in NSW. The Year 2 report detailing this collaboration, its findings and co-design methodology will be published later in 2025.
A smaller writing group developed a co-design companion document and submitted this work to the 2025 TheMHS Conference. The abstract detailed a workshop style session aimed to provide participants with a first-hand reflection of the co-design process – ‘Share the Learnings’ – as well as a space to apply these findings to past or future co-design projects. This facilitated dialogue on the critical mindsets, principles and processes needed to support genuine collaboration between policymakers and people with Lived and Living Experience.
The workshop took a three-part approach
- Whole group knowledge sharing, facilitated via a joint presentation between the LEAG writing group members and project leads from the NSW MHC.
- Breakout groups for real world application, with participants to explore putting theory into practice.
- Future visioning, using learnings to reflect on possibilities for participatory approaches across the sector.
The presenter and award winners
- Carrie Lumby, Co-Chair, Lived Experience Advisory Group (Lived Experience)
- Ben Brien, Lived Experience Advisory Group (Lived Experience)
- Jay Gardener, Lived Experience Advisory Group (Lived Experience)
- Fi Paskulich, Senior Policy Advisor
- Rachael Laidler, Senior Policy Advisor
The wider project team consisted of members from both the Mental Health Commission of NSW and other LEAG representatives.