Lived and living experience partnerships

Emerging Minds believes that lived and living experience is a vital pillar of evidence. Children, young people and families bring unique insights into what supports wellbeing, where systems work well, where they fall short, and how services, policies and resources can better respond to the realities of family life.

Our practices are guided by a commitment to partnerships that are meaningful, ethical, culturally responsive, and continue to evolve.

Lived and living experience expertise is embedded across different levels of organisational, advisory and project governance.

Lived experience representatives serve on the Emerging Minds Board, contributing expertise in setting the organisation’s strategic direction and providing governance oversight.

Child and Family Partnerships subcommittee

The Child and Family Partnerships subcommittee governs how Emerging Minds approaches lived experience partnerships. Members include lived experience family members, including the Chair, and other relevant Emerging Minds staff. The subcommittee:

• advises on strategic directions for lived experience partnerships
• monitors the processes and practices that support the implementation of lived experience partnerships at Emerging Minds
• supports the ongoing improvement of lived experience partnerships across all levels of governance and activity
• provides insights and perspectives that guide the policies, procedures, strategies and overall direction of Emerging Minds.

Emerging Minds Family Forum

The Emerging Minds Family Forum (EMFF) is the organisations primary lived experience advisory forum. The Forum has a diverse membership with lived and living experiences of family adversity, mental ill health service systems and caregiving. EMFF members work alongside Emerging Minds staff to provide advice on organisational priorities, projects, resources, policy, and understanding issues children and families are going through and what they need.

National mental health advisory partnership

Emerging Minds partners with the Mental Health Carers Australia (MHCA), the national mental health lived experience peak body representing families, carers and kin to ensure their perspectives are represented in national mental health policy and reform. This sits alongside other Australian Government-funded lived experience peaks including:

• National Mental Health Consumer Alliance (NMHCA)
• Indigenous Australian Lived Experience Centre (IALEC)

Emerging Minds contributes through a collaboration with MHCA to host and facilitate an expert advisory panel that brings together parents, grandparents, kin and young people with lived experience to provide insight and advice on national mental health policy and reform.

Emerging Minds is guided by the wisdom, leadership and cultural knowledge of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander lived experience advocates to support our work to be grounded in culture and reflects diverse communities and contexts.

The National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Consultancy Group of Emerging Minds provides advice on organisational activities, workforce initiatives and content development.

Children and families from diverse cultural, linguistic and migration experiences bring important perspectives that support understanding of the unique barriers in accessing and engaging with mental health support in Australia, including communication differences, stigma and service design.

Emerging Minds’ Global Majority Advisory Group helps ensure cultural knowledge and lived experience inform workforce development, service design and policy advice, making supports more accessible, equitable and culturally safe.

Emerging Minds aspires to the key aims of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) when seeking to hear and respond to children’s voices.

In practice, this looks like:

• Collaborating with young people with lived experience to reflect on their childhoods to impart their knowledge and wisdom
• Creative projects that honour children’s strengths and imagination in having their knowledge heard by others, run by skilled facilitators
• Intergenerational family contributions
• Establishing a Child Voice Community of Practice
• Embedding children’s perspectives into our work.

Emerging Minds responds to priorities impacting the social and emotional wellbeing of children, and elevates those not typically visible in the policy landscape, through provision of expert advice genuinely informed by child and family lived experience in policy consultations and to other stakeholders. We facilitate meaningful, ethical and effective collaboration with lived and living experience expertise to:

• understand child and family perspectives on priority issues and service system responses
• understand lived experience perspectives and needs through co-sensing the findings of Emerging Minds research and analysis
• contribute to policy recommendations and advice, through Emerging Minds’ activities and via external opportunities
• ensure child and family lived experience voices are meaningfully included in policy briefs, consultations and reports
• influence organisational priorities for future areas of work.

Emerging Minds seeks to collaborate and co-design with children and families with lived experience across all stages of work, at different levels of the organisation and using multiple mechanisms. This can include:

• phone or face-to-face interviews
• focus groups and workshops
• scoping, developing and reviewing resources
• video interviews
• webinars
• policy development
• funding applications
• co-facilitation of training sessions
• governance structures
• authoring and co-authoring resources
• sharing stories/personal narratives
• quality improvement activities
• surveys and questionnaires
• speaking to the media.

The following dedicated supports underpin lived experience partnerships at Emerging Minds:

• A framework outlining Emerging Minds’ commitment to, and ethical considerations and strategies for, enabling lived experience partnerships with children and families
• Embedding resourcing for lived experience partnerships, including a dedicated budget, staffing and time allocation
• Remuneration and reimbursement – recognising lived experience as an essential form of knowledge that sits alongside research and literature evidence
• Formal policies, procedures and a toolkit (see next section) to ensure Emerging Minds follows best practice
• Dedicated Lived Experience Advisors to support successful partnerships and help other staff to implement partnerships as a part of their work.