Victorian Collaborative Centre for Mental Health and Wellbeing’s Post

Connection is at the heart of all Lived and Living Experience Work. Over my career and the various roles that I have held, that core tenet of connection has looked different. As a Consumer Peer Support Worker, connection felt like more of a straight line. I would meet with, speak with and learn from consumers who were using the service I worked within. As a Lived Experience Project Officer, I would use both my personal lived and living experience and my understanding of the consumer perspective to connect the esoteric changes we were shepherding to the real world impact that might have on consumers using the services. As Consumer Peer Cadet Program Coordinator, I worked to build connection between people newly entering the Lived and Living Experience workforce and the decades-long history of the consumer/ psychiatric-survivor movement. As a Senior Workforce Development Facilitator - Consumer Lived and Living Experience Perspective, to be honest, I'm still figuring out what connection looks like in quite a new role. I'm genuinely excited by the prospect of being able to bring the consumer perspective to conversations that set priorities and identify what works and what doesn't. Sometimes I think wistfully of the times when connection felt as easy as looking up across the table at the person you were speaking with. The mental signposts I have to follow these days to find my way back to connection lead me on a roundabout path. It seems that connection, much like "recovery" or meaning-making, is not often a straight line.