RCH Mental Health is a service committed
to placing the lived experience of our infants and children, young people,
their families, carers and communities at the centre of everything we do.
Lived Experience Strategy
The Lived Experience Strategy outlines a
two year long set of projects that the RCH Mental
Health Service will deliver to begin our journey of better integrating and
embedding lived experience across our service. The Strategy has been led and
written by lived experience staff alongside our Consumer and Carer Advisory
groups. We hope that all our staff will join us as we embark on this journey
together. We know that the delivery of this Strategy will mean better
experiences for the consumers and families/carers we serve.
The RCH Mental Health Service is committed to ensuring all consumers and families/carers
have input into the design, delivery and evaluation of our service. We believe
that valuing the lived experience of consumers and families/carers is a
fundamental part of delivering our service and will aid us in better meeting
the needs of the communities we serve. As such, we have prioritised the
development of this Strategy in the first year of our Transformation Program to
allow us to design projects that will embed the voices of lived experience in
the following key domains:
- Leadership and governance
- Service planning
- Design and improvement
- Service delivery and workforce development and
training
The projects outlined in this Strategy
(please see pages 12 – 19) demonstrate our commitment to becoming a leader in
the lived experience engagement of children in the 0-18 age group, as well as
their families/carers and community members.
What do we hope to achieve?
We hope that this Strategy will be the
beginning of a transformation here at the RCH Mental Health Service, where we
see further and better integrated lived experience perspective and expertise
across the entirety of our service. We have developed an implementation plan in
this Strategy that outlines 11 key projects enabling us to continue towards
this goal.
September 2023 Implementation Update
As
we near the end of the first year of delivering our two-year RCH Mental Health Service
Lived Experience Strategy, we’re proud to reflect on the substantial progress
we have made in delivering a number of projects outlined in our implementation
plan (as outlined in pages 12-19 of the Strategy). Of the 11 projects we
promised to deliver, only three remain unactioned or in the early stages of
delivery. The three projects within the Strategy that were designed to be ongoing
or ad hoc projects have progressed to a ‘business as usual’ state where the
Lived Experience Lead and Carer Consultant undertake these projects within
their usual roles. A further three projects have been completed, and two are actively
underway. While one project has been unable to progress due to a lack of funding,
we expect that the remaining 10 projects outlined within the Strategy will be
delivered by December 2024.
For any questions or for further
information, please contact Natasha Swingler (she/her), Lived Experience Lead
(Consumer/Survivor perspective) at Natasha.Swingler@rch.org.au.