Hello, I'm Bridget (She/Her). I'm a LGBTIQA+/queer, mad, neurodivergent, and disabled person. I bring these parts of me into my lived experience work in an intentional way. Prior to working as a Lived Experience Worker, I had a scattered education and work history in various industries such as Childcare, Reception/Administration & Photography.

I am an extremely proud of and care deeply about Consumer Lived & Living Experience work and I align my practice to the Consumer Perspective and various discipline frameworks of lived experience work. Whilst also being drawn to and including additional practice frameworks & approaches from other communities and international frameworks such as De-pathologising, Disability Justice, Harm Reduction and non-coercive practice. I frequently come back to the roots of Consumer Perspective work, by drawing on the Consumer/Psychiatric Survivor/Mad movement.

Supervision has been one of the most sustaining supports in my working life. With it helping me stay in this field. When work has been hard, whether that was system pressures that felt heavy, there was ethical or values tensions in the job, when I witnessed injustice, or saw practice that did not sit right with me, supervision helped me steady myself and make sense of what was happening. Sometimes it helped me hang in there and not quit. Other times it helped me make intentional transitions and navigate change with care, moving towards roles that opened up new opportunities. It is a big reason I now offer supervision to others.

Recently I’ve learned & felt the direct consequences of how much my work/life balance truly has a direct impact on my wellbeing. This means I am super careful now to ensure that outside of work, I keep my personal life big enough, so that work cannot take over every moment of my day. I’m someone who needs creativity, humour, play, and I also enjoy spending time in nature. I love photography (both digital & film) and studied it at one point. I also enjoy listening & making music, playing boardgames and video games, and trying new crafts. One of my values is learning and growth, I’m still working on redirecting that value to focus on other topics outside of work. I also deeply value connection with my chosen family and building a life that has room for joy and rest.

I live, work, and play on the traditional lands of the Wurundjeri Woiwurrung people of the Kulin Nation. And am incredibly lucky that the land I feel most spirituality at home on, even if I don’t get to visit often, is Gariwerd Country.

I have over 10 years of experience in lived experience roles, some being volunteer, and others paid. I also have 6+ years in paid designated Consumer Lived Experience roles and have a large amount of training & knowledge in lived experience / peer support frameworks. Although my lived experience expertise is Consumer Perspective, I also have experience with using other aspects of my living experience in my work, including through dual roles (Consumer & Carer), specialised roles such as Eating Disorders, LGBTIQA+ living experience, disability living experience, among others.

My past roles have included working in a tertiary mental health/public mental health service and working in not for profits, NGO's and community organisations.

• Project Coordinator from January 2025 to June 2025 (secondment) at VMIAC.

This role included coordinating the Navigating My Way project to develop resources for NDIS participants with psychosocial disabilities. In this role I also used my living experience (as a NDIS participant with psychosocial disability) throughout the project to quickly build relationships with stakeholders. The project was grant funded by the NDIS Quality & Safeguards Commission. The role was based in the community in a consumer advocacy organisation (VMIAC).

This included:

• Coordinating project planning, design, delivery and evaluation

• Finalise resources and online tools co-designed with consumers and stakeholders.

• Provide information, support and training to stakeholders for them to navigate the newly designed resource/s

• Develop and maintain contractor relationships.

• Manage Project Officer’s workplan to assist with meeting deliverables of project

• Consumer Consultant from July 2020 to November 2025 at St Vincent’s Hospital Melbourne (St Vincent’s)

This role was situated at a public mental health service/hospital. The role covered most mental health services at St Vincent’s such as community services & inpatient. During my time in this role, I was involved in many projects related to implementing the Mental Health System Reform after the final Royal Commission report was released in Victoria. I provided systemic advocacy using the consumer perspective, with this resulting in service improvements & workforce development changes (such as advocating for additional LLEW roles including peer workers on the ED Mental Health & AOD Hub). I gained experience in leading, planning & co-facilitating the mental health service’s Consumer Advisory Group (CAG) and was consulted regularly on healthcare policy & health information.

Duties included:

• Planning and Co-facilitation of Consumer Reference Committee (CAG)

• Management of Consumer Register & planning of consumer participation activities

• Providing systemic advocacy using the Consumer Perspective, resulting in service development & improvement

• Attendance at Executive Level meetings

• Contributing to & preparing high level documentation such as policies, guidelines & executive summaries

• Provided consumer perspective supervision to the Consumer Lived & Living Experience Workforce (LLEW) at St Vincent’s

• Peer Support Worker from January 2020 to November 2025 at St Vincent’s Hospital Melbourne (St Vincent’s)

I worked at the two community services which were under St Vincent’s Mental Health. This involved providing individual peer support sessions, connecting consumers with community resources, and liaising with the consumer’s case manager. Whilst ensuring the consumer received peer support that was person centred, rights based & respected their autonomy. I also planned, co-facilitated & evaluated groups using lived experience expertise. Often my co-facilitators were healthcare workers from other disciplines (psychology, occupational therapy, nursing, exercise physiology & more). This included developing several new groups for the group program, such as a peer support group for consumers using the CHIME framework & a peer support group for LGBTIQA+ consumers. The consumers I worked with were often on community treatment orders & receiving treatment they did not want. However, they would engage with the peer support and group program voluntarily.

This included:

• Planning, Co-facilitation and Evaluation of groups under Group Program using a lived experience lens/consumer perspective

• Experience in providing one on one peer support sessions using Intentional Peer Support & Hearing Voices

• Connecting consumers with community resources to further their recovery goals

• Provided consumer perspective supervision to the Consumer LLEW at St Vincent’s Hospital Melbourne

• LGBTIQA+ Peer Navigator from September 2024 – December 2024 (secondment)

I provided cover for the role whilst the permanent LGBTIQA+ Peer Navigator was needing to take temporary/planned leave. This role involved using my LGBTIQA+ living experience as my main perspective and covered both consumer & carer lived experience. It involved supporting LGBTIQA+ communities accessing services through peer support & service navigation. Along with providing individual advocacy & project work for the hospital, to influence change & improve the services responses to LGBTIQA+ people. This role was across the entire service of a hospital - not solely based in Mental Health. A unique aspect of this role was working with the duality of being in a Catholic hospital that LGBTIQA+ communities may not want to access due to past poor medical experiences with healthcare, but noticing the hospital was focused heavily on moving towards ensuring it provided LGBTIQA+ safe and inclusive healthcare.

This included:

• Supporting LGBTIQA+ communities accessing services at St Vincent’s through peer support & navigation

• Providing individual advocacy to empower them to make informed decisions

• Influencing change & improving service responsiveness to LGBTIQA+ People.

Throughout my secondment some of the areas I aided with & projects I led were:

- Consultation for People & Culture on recruitment, selection and retention of Trans, Nonbinary and Gender Diverse staff

- in service training for Physio Department

- training staff who worked nationally across St Vincent’s Health Australia

- Supported one of the local services to update their amenities to be gender neutral

- Provided peer support & advocacy across multiple areas of the service (including outpatient appointments, general medical ward, inpatient psychiatric unit)

- Provided resources to both staff & patients (including resources on trans affirming healthcare & community resources)

- Drafted content for our new Model of Care framework for the Mental Health Department staff, covering the area of Gender Diversity

• Consultancy & project work from July 2025 as Sole Trader:

Where needed.

Have supplied short term project & facilitation work to VMIAC from July 2025 - September 2025.

• Lived Experience Storyteller (Volunteer) & other lived experience volunteering from 2014 to November 2025.

I have an extensive volunteering history in lived experience work. I have previously shared my story as a recovery speaker & been involved in public speaking at conferences, sat on advisory committees, been involved in project work & other activities. This has been through various mental health charities & lived experience organisations. Charities & organisations have included Eating Disorders Victoria, SANE Australia, Orygen, Headspace, Black Dog Institute, Switchboard & Roses in the Ocean. Happy to share more about this on request.

• Team Leader of Consumer Peer Workers from November 2025 onwards at Eating Disorders Victoria (EDV).

In this role I lead and support EDV’s Consumer Peer Workers & Consumer Peer Support Programs.

This includes:

• Coordinating the Consumer Peer Workforce, including task-based supervision and performance support, to make sure service objects are met
• Supporting peer workers to deliver sessions across all consumer peer led services. Guidance and support includes debriefing and group reflective practice sessions
• Delivering high quality trauma informed peer support for people with eating disorders and mental health experiences
• Coordinating and helping design and deliver group programs (including occasional cofacilitation of groups)
• Providing leadership in the design, delivery and continuous improvement of peer led programs
• Using lived experience to support evaluation and share insights through data analysis, reflective practice, and program design and development
• When needed, providing peer support to participants using different modalities including single session peer support and brief interventions style peer support
• Providing mentoring and Consumer Perspective Supervision to EDV’s Peer Cadet Program
• Coordinating EDV’s Peer Mentoring Program
• When needed, co-facilitating EDV’s SE-ED peer support group for people with Longstanding Eating disorders

• Program Administration role from April 2026 to June 2026 at Eating Disorders Victoria (EDV) – temporary backfilling.

This includes:

• Temporarily backfilling this role 1 day per week
• Completing administration support tasks for the Lived Experience Program/team, and Group Program, such as Humanatix Promotion, participant registrations for groups, attendance tracking, and follow up

• Consumer Perspective Supervisor (CPS) externally from July 2026 as a sole trader/self-employed. Providing individual and group CPS to LLE workers across Australia.

• Collaborative Leadership: Creating Cultures of Accountability, Structuring Safety & Justice-Doing in Community Work (March 2026)

• Peer Support Group Facilitation training (completed December 2025)

• Single Session Thinking (completed November 2025)

• Applied Health Management & Leadership single subject (completed November 2025)

• Consumer Perspective Supervision (completed December 2023)

• When Conversations Turn to Suicide (Alt2su) (completed May 2024)

• Co-design training (completed in October 2022 & February 2022)

• How to work effectively with allies (completed June 2021)

• Fundamentals in Project Management (completed April 2021)

• Hearing Voices Approach (2 day) training (completed April 2021)

• Intentional Peer Support (completed April 2021)

• Self-Advocacy for the NDIS (completed October 2020)

• LGBTIQA+ Suicide Prevention Training (Thorne Harbour Health) (Completed around March 2020)

• Other training has also been completed which I am happy to share upon request

My approach to supervision is grounded in Consumer Perspective Supervision (CPS) using the CPS Framework. I see supervision as a value based reflective learning space where lived and living experience workers can grow confidence in their peer practice, strengthen their leadership skills, and protect the integrity of consumer lived work overtime. Page 21 of the CPS Framework 'Summary: functions of consumer perspective supervision' provides a good overview of the areas I can support LLEW with for Supervision.

I usually work with a loose structure:

• a brief check in
• agreeing on what you want to focus on
• reflective/reflexive exploration of the topic
• identifying options,
• any follow up needed outside the session.

We may also explore during the session:

• alternative narratives that help make sense of a consumer’s worldview
• focus on the realities of working in various system (including ethical tensions, values clashes)
• how to sustain yourself without the work becoming your whole life
• naming peer drift gently and without shame (including enmeshment, or slipping into clinical roles, speech)
• naming disconnection (when you are no longer able to bring your heart to work).

All sessions are confidential.

Supervision with me is collaborative, warm, and non-hierarchical. I hold the belief that the supervisee is the expert in their own experience, and my role is simply to support reflection, meaning making, and practical next steps. I aim to support supervisees to use the supervision space to meet their intentions, needs and goals. I bring a depathologising lens and I aim to create a reflexive space that pays attention to power, oppression, and the social contexts & systemic injustices & structures that shape our work. My peer practice is aligned with frameworks such as disability justice, non coercive and lived experience discipline frameworks. And I draw on peer approaches and trainings such as Intentional Peer Support (IPS), Alternatives to Suicide (Alt2Su), and the Hearing Voices approach to support supervisees in providing ethical, consumer centred practice.

I also support reflective practice by noticing whose perspectives are being centred. We explore how power, privilege and lived experience may be shaping the conversation, decision making and our work as LLEW. This includes gently naming when we may be hearing a dominant viewpoint (for example a white able bodied neurotypical lens) and considering what changes when we centre the voices and needs of those most impacted by harm and oppression. Where relevant and appropriate, we may also explore decolonising approaches and other frameworks to practice. Together we build our ability to use frameworks that support culturally safer, more accountable practice and to recognise when we may need to learn, unlearn or consult others.

I appreciate the opportunity to be respectfully challenged in supervision. I see challenge as a part of ethical practice and ongoing learning. I value opportunities to grow, reflect and add new frameworks to my existing knowledge, particularly when this strengthens accountability to communities most impacted and oppressed.

I want to be clear in sharing that I am not knowledgeable or experienced in providing supervision externally on eating disorder specific supervision / eating disorder lived experience work (yet). This is an area that is specialised & I would like to continue to grow my confidence in this area first. If you are needing eating disorder specific supervision, please reach out to the other supervisors listed on the database or those listed on eating disorder specific organisations’ websites.

Please note: I am happy to do a free 30-minute meet & greet (usually over video call or the phone) prior to us booking in a first session. This ensures that I can confirm prior that I can appropriately support you with the goals and intentions you have for Consumer Perspective Supervision and answer any questions you may have.

I offer individual and group supervision (preferably small groups, up to 10 people). In groups, I provide some base guidelines & expectations around respectful interaction, time to speak, and how we will respond if something is unsafe. This provides the group session with more time for reflective practice. For organisations wanting to discuss group supervision, please get in touch to see if I may be a good fit.

I also welcome clinicians, allied health, healthcare workers, community workers and those working in these types of areas (including those from the UK, Canada & U.S.), who may want to engage in Consumer Perspective Supervision to strengthen their expertise in providing person centred care, building stronger connections with & allyship to Lived & Living Experience Workers (such as Mental health peer workers), or may want to access the space to reflect on & align with your own ethical & decision making frameworks. I find reflective practice is a great space to have deep discussions and learn how to sustain yourself in this often-challenging work. I also find there are many points of connection between our workforces/disciplines particularly in regard to human rights, social justice values and advocacy which allows an opportunity for us to grow together.