Why Every Mental Health Organisation Needs a Lived Experience Governance Framework: Now, Not Later

Across Australia, it is becoming impossible to ignore the message coming from consumers, governments and sector reviews: the current mental health system is not working, and lived experience leadership is no longer optional.

For decades we have operated under a heavily biomedical model. Its limitations are now formally recognised:

• The Better Access Review found the program does not meet the needs of the most vulnerable, increases disparity, and disproportionately benefits wealthier, metropolitan Australians.

• The Productivity Commission has repeatedly stated that the National Mental Health and Suicide Prevention Agreement is fundamentally broken.

• The Commission’s most recent analysis emphasises an urgent need to re-design policy settings around community based psychosocial supports and genuine lived experience involvement, not simply clinical throughput.

• The National Mental Health Commission’s Lived Experience (Peer) Workforce Development Guidelines further reinforce this direction, outlining a nationally endorsed, co-designed roadmap for embedding lived experience roles as a core and skilled component of the mental health workforce. The Guidelines make clear that lived experience is not an “add on”. It requires structured support, clear role definition, and governance processes that protect, empower and operationalise lived experience expertise.

These are not minor observations. They reflect a systemic failure to meet the needs of the people the system claims to serve.

And yet, while almost every organisation says they “embrace lived experience”, very few can clearly articulate how they do this.

This is where a Lived Experience Governance Framework becomes critical.

What Is a Lived Experience Governance Framework?

A Lived Experience Governance Framework is the visible, transparent mechanism that shows exactly how an organisation shares power, makes decisions, and embeds lived experience at every level of design, delivery, oversight and evaluation.

It moves lived experience from being:

• a concept

• a value

• a statement of intent

to being a structured governance practice with clear roles, authority, processes and accountabilities.

A genuine framework defines:

• Decision making structures that include lived experience leadership

• Clear power sharing mechanisms

• Co-design processes that genuinely influence decisions. Not symbolic consultation, but real authority on the final output.

• How collective wisdom is prioritised alongside clinical and operational inputs

• How lived experience is resourced, supported and protected within the organisation

• Reporting and oversight mechanisms that demonstrate integrity and transparency

In other words, it’s how you prove you’re not just using lived experience language, you are living it in operational reality.

Why It Matters: Alignment With National Directions

The Productivity Commission has made it clear: Australia must shift towards psychosocial, relational, community-based support, and this cannot occur without embedded lived experience governance.

A framework:

• Directly responds to the Commission’s recommendations about rebalancing power within the mental health system.

• Strengthens organisational alignment with the future of the National Mental Health and Suicide Prevention Agreement.

• Demonstrates readiness for upcoming reforms centred on consumer leadership, transparency and accountability.

This is quickly becoming the new standard, much like the evolution of:

• Reconciliation Action Plans (RAPs)

• Clinical Governance Frameworks

• Mandatory psychosocial safety requirements under updated WHS laws

• Social Impact reporting structures

Just as these frameworks moved from good practice to expected practice, lived experience governance is on the same trajectory. Organisations that adopt early will be seen as leaders; those who delay will eventually be forced to catch up as expectations, legislation, and funding requirements evolve.

Why External Facilitation Is Essential

Lived experience governance cannot be developed solely internally.

Mental health organisations have entrenched hierarchies, established cultures, and existing power dynamics, many of which directly impact employees and consumers with lived experience.

An external facilitator:

• Brings neutrality and psychological safety

• Eliminates internal bias

• Levels uneven power dynamics

• Ensures the process is co-designed authentically, not performatively

• Helps the organisation move past conceptual “support for lived experience” into clear, operationalised structures

Most importantly, external guidance ensures the framework is credible and can withstand scrutiny from funders, regulators, consumer groups and the broader community.

The Bottom Line

Lived experience governance isn’t a trend. It isn’t a nice to have and it isn’t going away.

It is fast becoming a core governance expectation across the mental health landscape.

Any organisation claiming to value lived experience must be able to demonstrate how - clearly, transparently and structurally.

A Lived Experience Governance Framework is the pathway to that. It builds trust. Trust that has been eroded by decades of unmet expectations and systemic failures. It builds integrity and it positions organisations at the front of the system redesign Australia desperately needs.

Interested in developing a Lived Experience Governance Framework for your organisation?

I support organisations to design authentic, evidence aligned, power balanced governance frameworks that embed lived experience from the ground up.

If your organisation wants to lead, not lag, the sector shift, get in touch and let’s talk through what this could look like for you.