Lived experience consultancy for mental health transformation

For peak bodies, government, community-managed organisations, research centres, and regulators leading complex change in mental health and suicide prevention.

I'm Michael Elwan, founder and director of Lived Experience Solutions (LEXs). I work with peak bodies, state and federal government agencies, NGOs, research centres, and regulators. The people who typically commission this consultancy are executive directors, deputy directors-general, NGO CEOs, program leaders, and research directors leading complex change in Australian mental health and suicide prevention systems.

The work sits where governance, evidence, cultural safety, and lived/living experience meet, and where most decisions have to hold technical complexity and human reality without collapsing one into the other. That is the integration this consultancy offers. Senior management experience across multimillion dollars service portfolios in Western Australian mental health and psychosocial disability. AASW-credentialed therapy practice. Active PhD research on lived/living experience leadership in mental health systems. Lived/living experience formed by caregiving from age fourteen, migration to Australia, and suicide bereavement. Active national governance across AHPRA, three NHMRC panels, Lifeline Australia, Suicide Prevention Australia, Roses in the Ocean, SAGE, and Manna Institute. Most consultants bring one or two of these. The LEXs lived experience consultancy draws on all of them at once.

Where the work focuses

Three areas, drawing on current and recent engagements alongside fifteen years of frontline-to-senior-management practice.

Lived/living experience leadership and workforce transformation

Moving organisations from tokenistic inclusion toward structurally embedded lived/living experience leadership. Governance integration, role design, supervision frameworks, psychological safety, and the cultural conditions that sustain lived/living experience leadership over time.

Recent and current shape: co-creation consultant on the national Mental Illness Fellowship of Australia Finding North platform (CALD stream, 2026 to 2027); lived experience advisory member of the Everymind National Early Intervention Service; contributor to the Sustainable Health Review Recommendation 4 work in WA Health.

Suicide prevention strategy with priority populations

Designing suicide prevention strategy that is culturally responsive, trauma-informed, and grounded in evidence and lived/living experience.

Recent and current shape: state and national lived experience advisory roles with Suicide Prevention Australia; PEERnet contributor with Roses in the Ocean; NHMRC Targeted Call for Research peer reviewer on Homelessness and Health 2025; panel speaker at the National Suicide Prevention Strategy "One Year On" anniversary, February 2026.

Multicultural mental health and culturally responsive systems

Strengthening cultural safety, equity, and responsiveness where migration, identity, trauma, and systemic exclusion intersect.

Recent and current shape: facilitator of the AASW national workshop on mental health in CaLD families; presenter of the AASW national webinar on multicultural men's mental health; member of the National Mental Health Consumer Alliance Multicultural Mental Health Expert Group; writer-in-residence at the ALIVE National Centre for Mental Health Research Translation, University of Melbourne.

What this lived experience consultancy delivers

Engagements typically produce one or more of:

• Strategy intensives for executive teams and boards

• Submissions, policy responses, and position papers

• Workforce capability and supervision frameworks

• Co-creation cycles facilitated end to end

• Training and education sessions for senior workforces and policy teams

• Sustained advisory partnerships through complex change

Why partner with LEXs

The work is strategically rigorous, anchored in evidence, policy literacy, and governance fluency. Culturally and ethically grounded, informed by cultural humility, trauma-informed practice, and lived/living experience leadership. Practically oriented, focused on implementable strategy, workforce capability, and real-world constraints.

Recognition for this work includes: the 2025 AASW National Excellence Award for Social Worker of the Year, the 2025 WA Mental Health Award for Lived Experience Impact and Inspiration, the 2026 Suicide Prevention Australia LiFE Awards (Outstanding Contribution Western Australia, and Priority Populations for LEXs), and the 2026 WA Multicultural Award for Outstanding Individual Achievement. Sole-authored peer-reviewed work appears in the Irish Journal of Psychological Medicine; co-authored peer-reviewed research appears in the Journal of Psychosocial Rehabilitation and Mental Health.

How engagement works

Engagements range from short strategy intensives through to sustained twelve-month advisory partnerships. Fees are scoped to organisational readiness, complexity, and the shape of the deliverable.

When making an enquiry, please include:

• The work you are scoping and the outcomes you are seeking

• Your organisation's context and any commissioning or budget framework

• Indicative timelines and key dates

• Whether you are seeking advisory input, project support, or sustained partnership

I'll respond with a proposed scope, approach, and fee. Where the fit is right, we move into a formal engagement; where it isn't, I'll say so directly and, where possible, suggest others who may be a better match.