Lived Experience Committee Help Guide MHCC ACT Decision Making and Advocacy

MHCC strives to ensure lived experience is at the heart of service development and provision in the ACT community mental health sector. To help guide this, in 2020 the MHCC ACT Board appointed two lived experience directors – Matilda Emberson and Bianca Rosetti.

In 2021 we have seen the inaugural Lived Experience Committee convened, with a purpose to advise the MHCC ACT Board, and operations.

Here we introduce the members of the Lived Experience Committee:

Kylie

Kylie is a Canberra based business owner. Kylie leads and delivers large-scale activities on behalf of government, the for purpose sector and small business. Kylie spent 10 years in the Australian Public Service, with 7 of those years in Executive level roles, across policy, program, project and service delivery departments. Following her public service career Kylie worked in the private sector, delivering services to government – the experience which ultimately drove her to start Parbery Consulting.

Kylie brings a community focused approach to her personal and professional life. She instills a set of values and strives to engender a culture focused on community contribution within her business. She encourages her employees to give back and supports them to do so. The drive to give back to the community in which she lives, and Kylie’s personal experiences as a carer of someone with a mental illness, is what motivated Kylie to join the MHCC Lived Experience Committee.

Rose

Rose Clifford lives with and manages general anxiety and during her 2nd, 3rd and 4th year of university was diagnosed with and recovered from an eating disorder, Anorexia Nervosa (2014-2016). Since that time, she has completed her double degree in Arts and Psychology, her honours year in Psychology and commenced a PhD in psychology in 2018 (at the ANU), with a focus on eating disorders. When she isn’t studying, she spends her time working at the university as a psychology tutor and teaching assistant for several undergraduate psychology course and volunteering her time with several mental health organisations in Canberra.

In 2020 she was named the Young Canberra Citizen of the Year for her work and advocacy in mental health. She volunteers with Mental Illness Education ACT, sharing her lived experience story and Lifeline taking calls on their crisis line. She has co-designed several mental health education programs currently being delivered to youth in the ACT and recently won a grant to develop a Mental Health Empowerment and Leadership program for youth. She has used her lived experience to help inform research proposals and grant applications and has assisted in the education and professional development of Occupational Therapists, Counsellors and Psychologists in the ACT.

Rose believes in the power of lived experience story sharing to inform, educate and connect our community in mental health. This is in part what motivated her to join the MHCC Lived Experience Committee so that she can continue to use her lived experience to help develop better services and supports for those experience mental health difficulties themselves.

Arun

Arun lives with a complex and complicated history of mental ill health and has experienced diagnostic difficulties resulting in lots of diagnoses and confusion around his condition (?). Arun is very interested in patient (or consumer) centred care, and as an NDIS participant for psychosocial disability, is a strong believer in the need for consultation with community.

Arun has studied Epidemiology at university and undertaken a stint at the World Health Organisation. He has since worked in public health, which has supported and helped drive his own treatment and care. In the workplace Arun has led the start-up of a CALD staff network, and externally started a SMART recovery group focused on substance addiction and behaviour support.

Arun has a strong interest in employment related advocacy, and in the innovation space for evidence-based practice in care models. His engagement in health and social services have led him to lead a meaningful and dignified life.