The imperative for lived experience leadership

Lived experience leaders are crucial for moving services and systems towards a recovery approach. There is a global imperative for growing lived experience leadership, that needs to translate into change in the New Zealand workforce. People with lived experience of recovery need to occupy senior leadership roles impacting social policy, system management, planning, education, program development, and evaluation. Aotearoa New Zealand has made progress in implementing senior leadership roles for people with lived experience of mental health challenges and addiction but this progress needs to be extended, as well as reinforced, through appropriate workforce development.

This 2018 article in the Psychiatric Rehabilitation Journal argues that “there is an existing space within the mental health sector where lived experience leaders are best qualified to address critical issues for which professionalized (i.e., traditional) knowledge has not been effective”. Lived experience leaders across the spectrum of consumer, peer support and lived experience roles bring a unique contribution in the support, advocacy and policy arenas.

Creation of and support for lived experience leadership roles must include appropriate remuneration, role clarity, career trajectories, and access to training and supervision. This degree of workforce investment reflects the value that people with lived experience bring to their roles, and the contribution they make to the health sector. As this article states, “People with a lived experience can bring clarity and profound, personal understanding of recovery to the broader field, when provided opportunities to meaningfully input and collaborate”. There is work underway through the Consumer, Peer Support and Lived Experience workforce development Strategy Action Plan (2021), but this work cannot be achieved in isolation or without the support of many friends and allies.

As we work to grow and develop the workforce to achieve this vision of lived experience leadership, “there remains a risk of tokenistic participation as long as power is not shared and the lived experience contribution does not have equal authority”. How do you see power being shared in the consumer, peer support and lived experience workforce, and where do we need more authority? What opportunities are you seeing for us to meaningfully input and collaborate?

Read CPSLE Action PlanRead Global Need LE Leadership article