ABOUT
About Michael Elwan and LEXs
Founder and Director of Lived Experience Solutions (LEXs)
Accredited Social Worker and PhD candidate at Charles Sturt University.
I am Michael Elwan. My work sits where lived and living experience, therapy, supervision and organisational change meet. Through LEXs, I work with individuals, practitioners and organisations across mental health, suicide prevention, multicultural practice and lived experience leadership.
The different parts of the practice share a common concern: whether care, professional practice and organisational systems can hold complexity without losing the person inside it.
Perth-based. Working online across Australia in English and Arabic.
2025 Social Worker of the Year, Australian Association of Social Workers (AASW)
My Story
I was born in Alexandria, Egypt, and was raised for much of my childhood by my grandparents. They were my first experience of unconditional love, and I lost them both within a year.
At fourteen, I became my father's carer after a major stroke left him blind. He died when I was sixteen. Not long afterwards, I began caring for my mother through years of mental health challenges. She later died by suicide.
In the family and cultural world I grew up in, grief was often carried in silence. Masculinity meant endurance, and vulnerability had little language. What I now understand as trauma was, at the time, simply life.
I came to Australia in my late twenties, on my own, with English as a second language. I built my career from the ground up through volunteering, night shifts in residential care and youth work, and study alongside employment.
These experiences continue to inform my work. They do not mean that I know another person's experience before listening to them. I bring what I have learned alongside professional knowledge, research and a responsibility to recognise the limits of my own perspective.
What shapes my work
I bring four complementary perspectives: family caring, frontline and senior mental health work, social work and systems thinking, and doctoral research. My multicultural background shapes all four.
01
Family caring
My experience as a young carer and long-term family carer informs how I understand the knowledge, responsibility and emotional demands that families carry, including what services do not always recognise.
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02
Frontline and senior mental health work
My work across frontline practice and senior management helps me connect people's experiences with the conditions surrounding care: staffing, supervision, service quality, resources and organisational responsibility.
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03
Social work and systems thinking
I pay attention to the relationship between a person's distress and their history, culture, circumstances and relationships. This means considering both individual needs and the systems affecting people's lives.
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04
Doctoral research and multicultural perspective
My doctoral research examines organisational support for lived and living experience leadership. Working in English and Arabic, I also consider how language, migration, identity and family roles shape practice and participation.
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PROFESSIONAL JOURNEY
From frontline practice to organisational leadership
My professional background spans peer work, case management, residential care, youth work, contract management and senior leadership across mental health and community services.
In senior management, I led ten statewide mental health services and approximately 75 staff, supporting services working with more than 1,600 people each year. My responsibilities included workforce leadership, service quality, operations and organisational performance.
In a separate senior quality and innovation role, I provided strategic and quality leadership across approximately $30 million in mental health service delivery.
Earlier, as a Contracts Manager, I held responsibility for more than 50 service contracts valued at approximately $53.2 million, spanning mental health, disability, youth, housing and family services.
I have also served at board level within a specialist trauma service, alongside advisory, research and committee roles across mental health, social work and lived experience.
That background shapes how I approach organisational work. A recommendation has to be useful beyond the report. Someone needs the authority, time and resources to act on it, and the organisational conditions need to support the intended change.
Why I founded LEXs
I founded Lived Experience Solutions (LEXs) to bring together work I had previously encountered in separate places: lived and living experience, professional practice, organisational leadership and multicultural mental health.
The purpose is to create a practice where care feels human again, while taking evidence, professional responsibility and implementation seriously.
For individuals and couples, that means working with the person in the context of their relationships, culture and circumstances. For practitioners, it means supervision that considers the person doing the work as well as the work itself. For organisations, it means looking beyond whether lived experience is present and asking whether it influences decisions.
Training and speaking extend that work into professional, organisational and community learning. They create opportunities to examine assumptions, develop practical understanding and consider what needs to change.
What to expect when we work together
My approach is direct, careful and relational. I take time to understand the person, organisation or problem in context rather than rushing towards a framework or solution.
Care that considers the whole person
In therapy, I work with individuals and couples, including people navigating grief, caring responsibilities, migration, identity and relationship difficulties. The focus is on your experience and what you need from the work, not on assuming that a shared background means a shared story.
Supervision that makes room for the practitioner
In supervision, I pay attention to judgement, emotional demands, professional identity, culture, power and boundaries. Social Work Supervision, Lived Experience Leadership Supervision and Frontline Team Supervision have different purposes and scopes. They remain separate from therapy.
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Organisational work with a clear purpose
Consultancy focuses on the organisation: who has authority, how decisions are made, what supports the workforce and how the organisation can understand the influence of lived experience. Training develops knowledge, judgement and practical capability. Either can be commissioned directly, or they can be combined where the brief calls for both.
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Qualifications and professional standing
I am an Accredited Social Worker and a full member of the Australian Association of Social Workers (AASW). My education spans social work, mental health, business and organisational practice.
Social work and mental health
PhD in Mental Health, in progress
Charles Sturt University. Research focused on organisational support for lived and living experience leadership.
Master of Social Work
University of New England, specialising in Counselling for Loss and Grief.
Graduate Certificate in Mental Health
Australian Catholic University.
Business and organisational practice
Master of Business Administration, with Distinction
Cardiff Metropolitan University.
Bachelor of Commerce, specialising in Accounting
Alexandria University.
MicroMasters in Organisational Psychology, with High Distinction
University of Canterbury.
MicroMasters in Business Leadership, with High Distinction
University of Queensland.
Member of the Australian Association of Social Workers (AASW) and the Australian Association for Cognitive and Behaviour Therapy (AACBT)
Recognition
My work and the work of LEXs have been recognised across social work, mental health, suicide prevention and multicultural communities.
Social Worker of the Year
2025 AASW National Excellence Awards
Lived Experience Impact & Inspiration
2025 WA Mental Health Awards
Outstanding Individual Achievement Award
2026 WA Multicultural Awards
Outstanding Contribution, Individual
2026 Suicide Prevention Australia LiFE Awards
Priority Populations
2026 Suicide Prevention Australia LiFE Awards
I was also a finalist for the Sir Ronald Wilson Leadership Award at the 2025 WA Multicultural Awards and in the Conversation Leader category of the 2025 R U OK? Barbara Hocking Memorial Awards.
Research, writing and speaking
My doctoral research examines organisational support for lived and living experience leadership. My published work also explores co-creation, experiences of mental health care and how services understand the outcomes that matter to people.
Psychiatric Services
2026
When Treatment Becomes Fate reflects on what happens when treatment is presented without enough explanation or context, and why families need honest information, relational care and a broader understanding of distress.
Journal of Psychosocial Rehabilitation and Mental Health
2025
A co-authored study examining whether Australia’s national adult mental health outcome measures adequately capture functioning, using the International Classification of Functioning and mental health Core Sets as reference points.
Irish Journal of Psychological Medicine
2024
A lived experience perspective on recovery-oriented care, exploring how co-creation can extend from co-ideation through co-evaluation and support more holistic, person-centred mental health services.
I have also contributed to the ALIVE Writer-In-Residence series and presented at conferences, webinars, and professional development events
LET'S MAKE A DIFFERENCE TOGETHER
Work with me
Whether you're an organisation, a professional, an individual, I'd love to explore how we can work together
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