Lived Experience Lead | Kaiarahi Wheako Ora, Hutt Valley-Wairarapa Locality
What drives your passion for advancing the lived experience voice?
I have painful personal lived experience of mental health and addiction issues starting at a young age. I subsequently had intense experiences of stigma and discrimination in hospital while being treated for a physical health condition.
These experiences have driven a lifelong desire to make things better and led me to a career working in and around mental health and addiction services to help achieve this, so I can be confident that people will be helped, not harmed.
I was told from a very young age that I would never be able to work or have children. It's been a long and winding road to finding out that was simply untrue – I have gone on to have a long career and recently welcomed my first grandchild!
What led you to this role?
I became involved in Vincent’s Art Workshop, which helped me process some of the unspeakable life events that had happened to me. Vincent’s gave me an identity as an artist, which was a much more positive role than being a broken person.
I then started to work at the Wellington Mental Health Consumers’ Union, running day services, then doing advocacy work. I co-managed the organisation and negotiated contracts for services.
I then went and worked at WellLink as a Peer Specialist and then manager of services in Kāpiti. In 2006 I set up the first peer led and run acute alternative, Key We Way. The name refers to Kiwi ingenuity, but also to the ‘key’ to this service being our relationships – the way we do relationships, both with the people coming in in distress, and with clinical partners.
I’ve been a District manager and a Lived Experience Partner at Emerge Aotearoa. I served 12 years on the board for the Mental Health Foundation, where together we created a wellbeing agenda, and the vision “A society where all people flourish”. People previously didn't think of mental health in terms of wellbeing, and positive mental health. Typically, they thought of mental illness and mental illness management services.
What are you looking forward to in this role?
For me, the MHAIDS role is a dream job. What gets me up in the morning is a desire to find ways to create more respectful and healing environments for people.
My Lived Experience colleagues and I work in locality teams, partnering with the Operations Manager(s) and Clinical Leader(s). Each locality team will come up with a plan to improve delivery locally, and we’ll also be able to share that knowledge with other localities, service partners, and executive leadership.
There is a huge opportunity to improve service delivery at a local level – but also more broadly. That's very exciting.
What opportunities do you see for this role to advance the lived experience voice in MHAIDS services?
All three Lived Experience Leads are in the process of identifying opportunities at different levels, from connecting with people supported by the service, to reviewing documents.
I've been working to forge warm, collaborative relationships with everyone working in the locality teams, acknowledging that staff know what is and isn't working with current systems and processes, and have really good ideas for improvements.
The larger goal for this role – to improve mental health and addiction delivery for our communities – can’t be achieved by MHAIDS teams in isolation.
I'm currently meeting up with lots of NGOs and other community providers to build a robust understanding of what community services are available. I will then share this knowledge with the teams in my locality. With a greater understanding of available services, teams can share the load, freeing up their time while improving life opportunities for tāngata whaiora.
