This supervisor has been approved to provide supervision under the ACCESS TO SUPERVISION PROJECT.

I began my Lived Experience Career as a Consumer member of the Mental Health Legal Centre in 2000 and as a Consumer Consultant at Forensicare from 2003 through to 2008. In the years at Forensicare I forged strong rapport with my fellow consumers and a deep understanding of the issues facing Forensic Consumers. We worked successfully at getting significant changes and advocated through all levels of the organisation including the Executive level. I bring good ‘humour’ to all the work I do, which guards and protects from many of the challenging aspects that a mental health system brings to us all at times. In my time as a Senior Consumer Advisor at the Department of Health, Mental Health Division and Safer Care Victoria, I’ve come across a multitude of circumstances, situations and challenges that Lived and Living Experience workforce members come across and are confronted with. I’m genuinely familiar with working relationships that many of us experience, particularly between Clinical and Non-Clinical workforces along with working relationships between Lived and Living Experience Workforce colleagues. Many years ago, I had a relatively successful acting career alongside a Sales career in a variety of settings and settled in a Lived Experience Consumer career of which I love and cherish. My compassionate approach has kept me in good stead and continues to grow with each and every interaction with fellow Consumer workforce members.

This supervisor has been approved to provide supervision under the ACCESS TO SUPERVISION PROJECT. If you are a supervisee who has received an approval email/letter from the CMHL you may contact this supervisor for supervision for this project, then follow the stated processes for supervision payment.

Senior Consumer Consultant Forensicare, Thomas Embling Hospital, 2003-2008

First Senior Lived Experience Consumer Advisor Department of Health, Mental Health Division, 2008-2012.

Sessional Community Member Mental Health Tribunal, 2012-2014.

Senior Lived Experience Advisor (Consumer) Mental Health Complaints Commissioner, 2014-2019

Senior Lived Experience Advisor Consumer, Office of the Chief Mental Health Nurse, Mental Health and Wellbeing Division, 2019-2021

Senior Lived Experience Advisor (Consumer), Senior Project Officer, Mental Health Improvement Program, Safer Care Victoria, 2021-2025.

I’ve recently left Safer Care Victoria following a re-structure and plan to return to the Lived Experience Workforce in the foreseeable future.

I wish to offer my services as a Lived Experience Consumer Supervisor particularly following extensive Consumer Perspective Supervision training through Inside Out & Associates convened and run by Sandy Watson and Kath Thorburn in 2024.

I also had the honor of completing Intentional Peer Support Training run by Flick Grey in Melbourne in early 2014.

Consumer Perspective Supervision training through Inside Out & Associates convened and run by Sandy Watson and Kath Thorburn in 2024.

Intentional Peer Support Training run by Flick Grey in Melbourne in early 2014.

Being acutely aware of the challenges, difficulties, tensions and conflicts that can arise within the workplace, I utilise Consumer Perspective Supervision and the tenets of Intentional Peer Support in my supervision work.

I bring a wealth of understanding and direct experience to my work and will work with individual Consumer Workforce members in a concerted, compassionate, understanding and positive way.

I’ll build a trusting relationship, I’ll foster mutuality, and I’ll provide a safe, shared space for us to work compassionately within.

Consumer Lived Experience work can be extremely lonely, and as you can appreciate being the only lone Consumer Workforce member in the Department of Health for many years, I built a reservoir of self-protecting mechanisms. I’ll look forward to working with my fellow Consumer Workforce members in ways that draws on our experience and understanding and engage in reciprocity. What is it that I can learn from you, that you can learn from me, that we both learn together moving forward and moving toward?