Lived and Living Experience Authority Member

Wellways is committed to reconciliation, lived experience and inclusivity. We strongly encourage and warmly welcome people from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities, people with a lived experience of mental health and disability, peoplewho identify as family, kin or carers and people who identify as LGBTIQA+ to apply. Even if you only meet some of the criteria, we’d love to hear from you.

About the Lived and Living Experience Authority

Wellways is a not-for-profit organisation providing services to both people with a personal experience of mental health challenges, service use, periods of healing / personal recovery, and disability, and people with experience of supporting someone through this process. Wellways has a continuing commitment to innovation that ensures the priorities of the people we work with, and their local communities are core to what we do and how we do it.

Wellways is committed to becoming an organisation that is the change that Wellways’ participants and the broader lived experience movements envisage, one that respects and embeds the authority and expertise of people with lived and living experience (LLE) at all levels of our organisation. The Wellways Lived and Living Experience Authority (the LLE Authority) is being established as a key means by which change will be achieved as part of the organisation’s governance arrangements.

The LLE Authority has been designed to be a sustainable LLE voice that operates and impacts at the governance level of the organisation. The governance level sits separately from daily organisational activity and oversees organisational direction setting and planning, processes and policies, stakeholder engagement, and performance management of the organisation. The Board expects to learn from, be challenged and held to account by and to work in partnership with the LLE Authority to ensure that governance decisions reflect LLE perspectives.

The role of the Lived and Living Experience Authority

It will be the role of the LLE Authority to:

• Support and enable the Wellways’ Board and CEO to hold themselves accountable consistently and transparently to participants of all our programs and to the communities served by the organisation,
• Influence the thinking and decisions of the Board and CEO by sharing – responsively and proactively – LLE perspectives and providing advice and/or making recommendations on specific issues,
• Engage in ongoing conversation with the Board and CEO around the challenges of transformation and elevating LLE expertise,
• Connect into Wellways’ operational level LLE advisory groups, ensuring it has ongoing knowledge of the experiences of people and communities who engage with Wellways,
• Develop capability and pathways into LLE governance level roles within Wellways and connect to relevant LLE governance networks.

Please click here for a visual illustration of what the Lived and Living Experience Authority is: LLEA Summarised.

The role of the members of the Lived and Living Experience Authority:

The members led by the Co-Chairs will contribute to establishing the mechanisms by which the Authority will operate, including their relationships with the Board and CEO, its connection to the experience of people using Wellways’ services, and processes and structures of the Authority.

To be successful in this role, you will need to be a person with a lived experience of a mental health challenge, or a person with a disability OR someone with a lived experience of being a family member/kin or carer. You will also need to:

• Demonstrate Lived Experience expertise
• Prioritise lived experience in decision-making through a dedicated lens
• Uphold recovery values and champion the peer movement
• Acknowledge strength in vulnerability and support diverse lived experiences.
• Articulate distinctions between consumer and carer perspectives
• Advocate for justice in governance by rebalancing power and challenging stereotypes
• Engage in authentic coproduction and work from rights-based principles
• Mobilise strategically, impacting governance with a focus on long-term change
• Speak out with courage, conviction, and effective communication
• Foster connected spaces, empower lived experience voices, and lead change by challenging the status quo and aligning language with intention

What will be expected of you:

• Members need to be available for in person and online meetings at least once a month, and from time to time more often, including for extended learning and strategy events
• Members are expected to prepare for meetings, including by reading papers, and also to follow up on any action agreements coming out of meetings
• The expected time commitment per month is up to two days

Other requirements

• NDIS Worker Orientation Module Certificate
• Satisfactory National Police Records Check- people will not be excluded for non-relevant history and privacy is assured
• NDIS Worker Screening Check and Working with Children’s Check

People with a range of diverse experiences are encouraged to apply, such as Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander people, Culturally and Linguistically Diverse people, members of the LGBTIQ+ community, people with experiences of homelessness or contact with the justice system and people from rural backgrounds.

Position Description: Please click here to download a copy of the role description to see further details relating to this role.

In your application, please include an outline of what you have done before in your life and a cover letter that talks about your expertise with examples of how you have used your Lived Experience to bring about change. Use the 6 criteria on page 4 of the role statement to write the cover letter.

To learn more about the Lived and Living Experience Authority, please visit our website at: https://www.wellways.org/about-us/lived-and-living-experience-authority

For a confidential discussion about the role, please contact Deb Hamilton on 0410 599 576.