Lived experience consultancy

for multicultural mental health transformation

Michael Elwan is a lived experience consultant working across mental health, suicide prevention, multicultural systems, governance, research, and lived/living experience leadership.

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For government agencies, peak bodies, community-managed organisations, research centres, regulators, and mental health leaders navigating complex change.

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Many organisations already know what solution they want.

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A new advisory group. A co-design process. A workforce strategy. A consultation. A framework. A resource. A training program.

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Sometimes those solutions help.

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Sometimes they create activity without creating change.

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The harder question is whether those solutions are addressing the real problem.

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In my experience, organisations rarely struggle because they lack commitment. More often, they are trying to solve the wrong problem.

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An advisory group may not be influencing decisions because the issue is authority rather than participation. A workforce initiative may struggle because the conditions required for lived/living experience leadership have never been established. A multicultural engagement strategy may not be reaching communities because the issue is trust, language, family dynamics, migration experiences, or who has been excluded from the conversation from the beginning.

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Before solutions can work, the problem needs to be understood clearly.

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That is where Lived Experience Solutions (LEXs) begins.

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How I work

I am Michael Elwan, Founder and Director of Lived Experience Solutions (LEXs). I work with government agencies, peak bodies, regulators, NGOs, community-managed organisations, research centres, and senior leaders across mental health, suicide prevention, multicultural systems, and lived/living experience work.

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My lived experience consultancy sits at the intersection of four lenses that rarely come together in the same room.

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The first is lived/living experience understood as authority, not anecdote. Too often, lived/living experience is invited to illustrate a point that others then interpret, write up, and act on. My work asks a different set of questions: who holds the pen, who the work serves, who sets the terms, and what actually shifts as a result. A lived/living experience strategy is better tested by whether it changes recognition, resourcing, embedding, and accountability than by whether it uses the right language.

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The second is multicultural and cross-cultural depth. Lived/living experience is never culturally neutral. How people experience distress, suicide, caregiving, family obligation, help-seeking, shame, and trust in services is shaped by culture, language, faith, migration history, and community. So this lens keeps my attention on who is not in the room. Including lived/living experience in general terms is not the finish line. The harder question is whether a multicultural community member, a person needing an interpreter, or someone carrying family and cultural obligations can move from being consulted to being recognised, resourced, and supported as a contributor or leader on their own terms.

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The third is research discipline. I stay close to the question of whether an approach can actually be evaluated. Many organisations can produce language that sounds progressive; fewer build something that can be tested, improved, and held accountable over time. I help organisations ask that harder question of their own work before others ask it for them.

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The fourth is implementation reality. I pay attention to the operational questions that decide whether a strategy survives contact with a real organisation: who is accountable, what changes on Monday, where the resource comes from, how the work is governed, and whether the people carrying it have the authority and support to keep doing it.

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Together, these lenses help LEXs do more than provide lived/living experience input. They help organisations test whether lived/living experience, multicultural perspectives, suicide prevention priorities, governance, resourcing, and accountability are genuinely changing how decisions are made.​

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Consultancy offers

LEXs consultancy focuses on three areas an organisation can commission. Culturally responsive suicide prevention runs through all three, rather than sitting apart from them.

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Multicultural co-creation of services, resources, and programs

Many services, resources, and programs are designed with good intent and still struggle to reach multicultural communities, families, carers, men, people with migration histories, people affected by stigma, or people who do not speak in familiar service language.

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LEXs supports organisations to design or redesign services, resources, programs, and engagement processes so they are more culturally responsive, lived/living experience-informed, and usable in practice. This work draws on the four-process co-creation framework developed by Pearce and colleagues (2020): co-ideation, co-design, co-implementation, and co-evaluation. I extend it in my own practice to include co-dissemination, getting co-created work out into communities, policy, and practice rather than leaving it to sit in a report. It may involve reviewing a current resource, shaping a new service model, strengthening community engagement, testing whether participation pathways are safe and supported, or helping teams understand why a well-intended approach is not reaching the people it was meant to serve.

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Current consultancy includes multicultural lived/living experience co-creation with a national mental health information and connection platform for priority populations.

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This offer draws on my multicultural lived/living experience, senior management background, therapy and supervision practice, the national AASW workshop on mental health in CaLD families, and the AASW webinar on multicultural men's mental health.

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Lived/living experience contribution to research and evaluation

Research and evaluation can involve lived/living experience without fully showing how that knowledge shaped the design, interpretation, findings, or recommendations.

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LEXs supports research teams, universities, centres, and project leads to use lived/living experience and multicultural insight with more discipline and accountability. This can include advising on study design, reviewing participant-facing materials, supporting recruitment or consultation, interpreting findings through lived/living experience and multicultural lenses, and strengthening how research outputs speak to practice, policy, and community realities.

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This work is especially relevant where research touches mental health, suicide prevention, multicultural communities, families, carers, help-seeking, service access, or lived/living experience leadership.

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Recent work includes lived/living experience contribution to a national suicide prevention study and consultation support for a university-led family study.

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Including lived/living experience in research is the starting point. The harder work is helping research teams use it honestly, safely, and in ways that strengthen what the work can say and what it can change.

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Lived/living experience advice on policy, standards, and system design

Policies, standards, frameworks, and system designs can name lived/living experience while still leaving authority, resourcing, accountability, and implementation unclear.

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LEXs supports organisations and system leaders to review policies, standards, advisory structures, engagement approaches, governance models, and system designs so lived/living experience is not only present in language, but visible in decision-making, funding, safety, and accountability.

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This work is relevant where organisations are reviewing a draft policy, developing a framework, strengthening consumer, carer, family, or lived/living experience leadership, preparing for system change, or aligning lived/living experience commitments with service quality, human rights, suicide prevention, cultural responsiveness, and accountability.

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Recent work includes lived/living experience review and consultation connected to policy and system design in a state health context.

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The aim is to help organisations move from statements of intent to structures that can be governed, resourced, implemented, and reviewed.​

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How engagements work

Every engagement starts with the question underneath the request.

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You may come with a service idea, draft resource, research project, policy, standard, evaluation, advisory process, workforce issue, or a difficult implementation problem. Before proposing an answer, I work with you to understand what is actually happening, what has already been tried, who the work is meant to serve, what stage the project is at, and what kind of change is realistic in your context.

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A short engagement may involve reviewing a draft resource, policy, research protocol, advisory model, engagement plan, or consultation process. A larger engagement may involve co-creation support across several stages, stakeholder conversations, synthesis of lived/living experience themes, multicultural consultation advice, written recommendations, or strategic support through implementation.

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Depending on scope, the work may include document review, sense-making sessions, written advice, project meetings, facilitated reflection, co-creation design, policy or submission writing, research consultation, or sustained advisory support.

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The work is judged by whether your decisions become clearer, more defensible, and more likely to hold in practice.​

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Evidence of standing

My consultancy work is informed by ongoing advisory, governance, research, and system reform roles across government, regulation, suicide prevention, research translation, multicultural mental health, and lived/living experience leadership.

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Commonwealth and national regulation and research

• AHPRA Accreditation Committee

• NHMRC, consumer and community panels

 

WA Government and system transformation

• WA Mental Health Commission, inaugural member of the Lived Experience Advisory Group

• Office of the Chief Psychiatrist, Lived Experience Consultation Group

• Advisory work on consumer, carer and community leadership in health system transformation

 

National lived/living experience and suicide prevention

• Lifeline Australia, Lived Experience Advisory Group

• Roses in the Ocean, Lived Experience Collective and Lived Experience Advisory Group

• Suicide Prevention Australia, National Lived Experience Panel and WA State Committee

• SAGE Lived Experience Advisory Panel

• Manna Institute

 

This standing matters because consultancy is judged less by what a proposal promises than by whether the advice can hold in the rooms where decisions, funding, governance, safety, policy, multicultural mental health, and suicide prevention meet.

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Recognition and publications

Recognition for this work includes national and state awards across social work, multicultural leadership, mental health, suicide prevention, and lived/living experience impact, including the 2025 AASW Social Worker of the Year Award, the 2025 WA Mental Health Award, the 2026 Suicide Prevention Australia LiFE Awards, and the 2026 WA Multicultural Award.

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Peer-reviewed publications include sole-authored work in the Irish Journal of Psychological Medicine and co-authored research in the Journal of Psychosocial Rehabilitation and Mental Health.

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Related LEXs services

Consultancy is one part of LEXs.

• For organisations seeking workforce capability, see LEXs training.

• For conferences, panels, and sector events, see keynote speaking.

• For practitioner development, see social work supervision and peer work supervision.

• Therapy for individuals and couples sits separately from consultancy.

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Make an enquiry

When making an enquiry, please include:

• the service, resource, policy, standard, research project, evaluation, or system change being scoped

• the stage of work: idea, draft, implementation, review, or evaluation

• the communities, workforces, or priority populations involved

• what lived/living experience involvement already exists

• what decision, deliverable, or change the work needs to support

• relevant timelines or key dates

• whether there is an existing commissioning or budget framework

• whether the organisation can be named publicly if the work proceeds

 

I will respond with a proposed scope, approach, and fee. Where the fit is right, we move into a formal engagement. Where it is not, I will say so directly and, where possible, suggest a more suitable pathway.

 

LEXs consultancy is for work where the right language alone is not enough, and the structures, decisions, and conditions underneath it have to hold.