Lived Experience Workforce Review for organisations across Australia
A Lived Experience Workforce Review is an independent organisational review of how lived and living experience roles, advisory groups and governance structures work in practice. LEXs reviews whether lived experience reaches decision-making, whether roles are properly supported, and what an organisation can evidence. Fixed-fee reviews start at $3,500 and are delivered online across Australia.
A lived experience workforce can exist on paper and still have very little influence on what an organisation actually does. The LEXs review examines the organisational conditions around the work: how lived and living experience enters the organisation, where it sits, how advice reaches decisions, and whether the roles and structures carrying it are designed to hold.
Every review ends in a written report with findings, the evidence behind them, and recommendations placed at the level of the organisation that can act on each one.
When organisations commission a review
Most organisations commissioning this work have already done the visible part. There may be an advisory group, peer workforce, designated lived experience roles, co-design processes or a strategy that commits the organisation to lived and living experience. The commitment is usually not in question. What is in question is whether any of it is changing decisions.
The signs tend to be structural. An advisory group meets regularly but nobody can identify a decision it changed. Lived experience roles exist but sit outside the structures where priorities, resources and services are determined. Supervision was never properly resourced. An accreditation cycle, funding submission or board discussion is approaching and the organisation cannot clearly evidence how lived and living experience participates in governance, co-design, workforce development or organisational decisions. Multicultural communities may be named in strategy while remaining absent from the structures intended to hear from them.
These problems are difficult to identify through satisfaction surveys alone. They become visible when someone examines how the organisation actually works.
National frameworks and standards used in the review
The principal national reference point is the National Lived Experience (Peer) Workforce Development Guidelines, developed by the National Mental Health Commission under Action 29 of the Fifth National Mental Health and Suicide Prevention Plan.
The Guidelines provide national guidance for organisations developing and embedding lived experience workforces, as well as for lived experience leaders, funding bodies, policy makers and service commissioners. The National Mental Health Commission also provides a self-assessment tool for employers considering their stage of workforce development.
For community managed mental health organisations, a review can also consider relevant requirements of the National Safety and Quality Mental Health Standards for Community Managed Organisations where these form part of the organisation’s accreditation, governance or funding context. This can include governance and co-design, lived experience workforce role clarity, supervision and support, diversity of representation, workforce capability, and the evidence available to show that these arrangements are understood and operating in practice.
Self-assessment and independent review serve different purposes. Self-assessment helps an organisation understand the framework and examine its own development. The LEXs review independently tests what is happening in practice against organisational evidence, the experiences of the people involved and actual decision-making.
That distinction matters when an organisation needs a credible account of its arrangements for a board, funder, accreditation process, workforce strategy, governance review or organisational decision.
What does a lived experience workforce review examine?
Whatever the scope, the review returns to four questions.
1. Who is in the room, and who is structurally absent?
Invitation is only the starting point. The review examines who can realistically enter and participate in the structure given payment, work hours, caring responsibilities, accessibility, language, cultural expectations, confidence navigating organisational systems and the way meetings and papers are designed. The question is not simply who was invited. It is who can participate, influence the work and remain involved.
2. Who decides?
Consultation matters only if there is a pathway between advice and authority. The review examines where advice goes, who receives it, who has authority to act, whether someone is accountable for responding and whether participants can see what happened after they contributed. Where possible, I test this against actual organisational decisions rather than relying only on terms of reference or statements of intent.
3. Do the roles and structures hold?
Creating a role or advisory structure does not create the organisational conditions required for it to work. Depending on scope, the review examines:
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role clarity and position descriptions
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reporting lines and organisational positioning
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classification and remuneration
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supervision and reflective support
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workload and expectations
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access to development
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authority and decision-making
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relationships with non-designated colleagues
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governance and accountability
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whether responsibility is matched by sufficient authority and resources.
The question is whether the organisation has built the conditions required for the role or structure to do what it was created to do.
4. What can the organisation evidence?
The review examines whether the organisation can substantiate what it says about lived and living experience through its structures, documents, decisions and outcomes. If a board, funder, accreditor or commissioner asked what lived and living experience had changed, what could the organisation actually show them?
What you receive
Every review produces a practical record of what was examined, what was found and what should happen next.
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A written report. Findings are presented with the evidence behind them so the reader can see how each conclusion was reached.
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Recommendations placed where they are owned. Each recommendation is assigned to the organisational level with authority to act, whether board, executive, senior management or operational management.
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Every recommendation identified as requiring investment or not. Changes that cost nothing should not wait behind changes requiring a budget decision.
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Role and classification findings where relevant. Where workforce roles are within scope, the review examines how roles are described, classified, remunerated, supported and positioned.
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A participant-ready version. Where people contributed directly, the organisation receives a version of the findings suitable to take back to them.
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The review questions. The organisation keeps the questions used in the review so it can repeat the check later without commissioning the same work again.
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Standards crosswalk where relevant. For community managed mental health organisations, relevant findings can be mapped to applicable National Safety and Quality Mental Health Standards requirements to show where the organisational evidence is strong, where gaps remain and who owns the response.
Where the evidence does not support a recommendation, I say so. The purpose of an independent review is to identify what needs to change, not to manufacture findings to justify the fee.
Scope and fees
There are three fixed-fee scopes. The question being reviewed determines the scope and fee.
All reviews are fixed-fee. The scope, approach, deliverables and fee are agreed in writing before the work begins.
If a review identifies something materially outside the agreed scope, I name it rather than quietly expanding the engagement. Any additional work is separately scoped and priced before it begins.
How the review works
1. Agree the question
We first establish what the organisation actually needs to know and what decision, change or requirement the answer needs to support. A precise review question prevents a broad consultancy exercise that produces a long report but no clear decision.
2. Review what already exists
I examine the material that shows how the organisation says the work operates. Depending on scope, this may include terms of reference, position descriptions, organisational charts, policies, strategies, lived experience frameworks, meeting papers, minutes, previous reviews, workforce information and material provided to boards or funders.
3. Talk to the people inside the structure
Documents show one version of an organisation. The people working inside it often show another. Depending on scope, interviews or review conversations may include lived experience workers, advisory group members, carers or family representatives, managers, senior leaders and people positioned where the relevant decisions are made.
4. Trace actual decisions
Where the evidence allows it, I trace a small number of relevant decisions backwards. Who influenced the decision? Where did advice come from? Where did it stop? What changed? Was there a response? Could the people who contributed see the result?
This tests influence rather than simply counting participation.
5. Check factual accuracy
Draft findings are checked for factual accuracy and relevant missing context before recommendations are finalised. This allows errors to be corrected without turning the process into a negotiation over findings the organisation finds uncomfortable.
6. Deliver the report where action can occur
The organisation receives the written report and a presentation or sense-making session with the group, executive team or governance body that owns the relevant recommendations.
7. Leave the method behind
The review questions remain with the organisation so the same issues can be examined again later. The aim is not to create dependence on another external review.
Advisory group, governance and peer workforce reviews
Organisations use different terms for closely related work, and the appropriate scope depends on what needs to be examined.
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A lived experience advisory group review focuses on one advisory structure, including membership, representation, terms of reference, authority, resourcing, participation, decision pathways and what happens after advice is given.
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A lived experience governance review focuses on how lived and living experience connects to organisational authority, accountability, reporting and decision-making.
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A peer workforce review places greater emphasis on designated peer or lived experience roles, including role clarity, classification, remuneration, reporting lines, supervision, development and workforce governance.
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Some organisations use lived experience workforce audit. LEXs uses the term review because the work is diagnostic rather than a formal compliance audit.
These questions can sit within the focused, multi-structure or full workforce scopes. If your organisation uses different terminology, describe the structure and the question you need answered and I will tell you which scope fits.
What happens after the review?
A review identifies what needs to change. It does not require the organisation to commission anything else from LEXs.
Some organisations can act on the findings themselves. Others move into lived experience consultancy to redesign a policy, governance structure, role, resource or organisational process. Where the findings identify a genuine capability gap, targeted development can follow for the people responsible for carrying the change.
The sequence matters because capability development works best when the organisation has first established what people need to be able to do and what structural conditions will support them. Where the need is specialist practice training rather than organisational change, LEXs training provides established programs in multicultural mental health and suicide prevention.
Who conducts the review?
I am Michael Elwan, Founder and Director of Lived Experience Solutions (LEXs), an Accredited Social Worker and PhD candidate at Charles Sturt University. I am based in Perth and work online with organisations across Australia.
I bring three forms of knowledge to this work that rarely sit together: lived and living experience as a carer and in my own right; senior organisational experience across mental health and community services; and doctoral research focused on what organisations need to put in place for lived and living experience leadership to work.
Before LEXs, I worked in senior management with responsibility for ten statewide services, approximately seventy-five staff, $30 million in service delivery and a $53.2 million contract portfolio supporting services working with more than 1,600 people a year. That experience matters because recommendations have to survive contact with the organisation expected to implement them. I understand what structural change costs, where implementation gets stuck and what managers can realistically carry.
I also work in English and Arabic and pay particular attention to who organisational structures include, who they exclude and who is absent before anyone notices. Multicultural communities can be named in strategy while remaining absent from the structures intended to represent lived and living experience; that gap is one of the things this review is designed to identify.
Advisory, governance and research context
My work is informed by ongoing roles across health regulation, mental health governance, lived experience research and suicide prevention, including:
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Member, Accreditation Committee, Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency (Ahpra)
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Co-Chair, Lived Experience Consultation Group, Office of the Chief Psychiatrist, Western Australia, contributing lived experience and human-rights perspectives to the review of the Chief Psychiatrist’s Standards and Guidelines for mental health care.
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Co-Lead, Carer, Family and Kinship Group, Lived-Experience Research Collective, ALIVE National Centre
The broader list of advisory and governance work is available on the LEXs consultancy page. These roles provide context for the perspective I bring to the work and are not endorsements of LEXs by the organisations named.
Recognition and publications
Recognition for my work and LEXs includes the 2025 AASW Social Worker of the Year, 2025 WA Mental Health Award for Lived Experience Impact & Inspiration, 2026 Suicide Prevention Australia LiFE Award for Outstanding Contribution, 2026 Suicide Prevention Australia LiFE Award for Priority Populations awarded to LEXs, and 2026 WA Multicultural Award for Outstanding Individual Achievement.
My peer-reviewed publications include sole-authored work in Psychiatric Services and the Irish Journal of Psychological Medicine, as well as co-authored research in the Journal of Psychosocial Rehabilitation and Mental Health.
Enquire about a Lived Experience Workforce Review
If you are considering a review, tell me what structure, workforce or question you want examined; what decision or change the review needs to support; and any relevant deadlines or external requirements.
I will respond with a proposed scope, approach and fixed fee within five business days. Where a review is the right piece of work, we proceed. Where the issue would be better addressed another way, I will say so.
Enquire about a Lived Experience Workforce Review
Frequently asked questions
What is a lived experience workforce review?
A lived experience workforce review is an independent organisational review of how lived and living experience works in practice. It examines the roles and structures that carry lived experience, how they are supported, where advice travels, who has authority to act on it, and whether lived and living experience can be shown to have influenced organisational decisions. It produces a written report with findings, evidence and practical recommendations; it is not an assessment of individual staff.
How much does a lived experience workforce review cost in Australia?
LEXs offers three fixed-fee scopes: $3,500 for a focused review, $7,500 for a multi-structure review, and $12,500 for a full workforce review. The scope and fee are agreed in writing before the work begins. LEXs is not registered for GST, so no GST is added.
Can you review one lived experience advisory group?
Yes. A $3,500 focused review can examine one advisory group in depth, including membership, representation, terms of reference, authority, resourcing, decision pathways, accountability and what happens after the group provides advice. An organisation does not need a large lived experience workforce to commission a review.
What is a lived experience governance review?
A lived experience governance review examines how lived and living experience connects to organisational authority and decision-making. It looks at where advice enters the organisation, who receives it, who is accountable for responding, where decisions are made and whether the governance structure allows lived experience advice to influence those decisions.
Is a peer workforce review the same thing?
A peer workforce review is one form of lived experience workforce review. It generally places greater emphasis on designated peer or lived experience roles, including position descriptions, role clarity, classification, remuneration, reporting lines, supervision, development and workforce governance.
What framework is the review based on?
The principal national reference point is the National Lived Experience (Peer) Workforce Development Guidelines, developed by the National Mental Health Commission. Where relevant, the review can also consider external requirements applying to the organisation, including the National Safety and Quality Mental Health Standards for Community Managed Organisations. These national reference points are considered alongside the organisation's own documents, participant evidence and examination of actual decision-making.
Can a Lived Experience Workforce Review support accreditation preparation?
Yes. For community managed mental health organisations, the review can examine relevant requirements within the National Safety and Quality Mental Health Standards for Community Managed Organisations as they relate to lived experience workforce and governance arrangements. This can include governance and co-design, role clarity, supervision and support, diversity of representation, workforce capability, and the evidence available to demonstrate that these arrangements operate in practice. The review does not determine accreditation status or replace assessment by an approved accrediting agency.
What documents do you review?
Documents depend on the question being examined and may include terms of reference, position descriptions, organisational charts, policies, strategies, meeting papers, minutes, workforce information, previous reviews and material provided to boards or funders. The purpose is to compare what the organisation says should happen with what happens in practice.
Who needs to participate?
Participation depends on scope. A focused advisory group review may involve group members, the convenor, the manager responsible for the structure and someone positioned where relevant decisions are made. A full workforce review may involve lived experience workers, managers, senior leaders and people responsible for workforce or governance arrangements.
Can LEXs help implement the recommendations?
Yes, where that is useful. Implementation is separately scoped and is not a condition of commissioning the review. It may involve redesigning a governance structure, policy, role, engagement process or other organisational arrangement through lived experience consultancy or lived experience training.
Are reviews available outside Western Australia?
Yes. LEXs is based in Perth and delivers Lived Experience Workforce Reviews online to organisations across Australia. Document review is completed remotely, with interviews, sense-making sessions and final presentations conducted by video.
