FOR ORGANISATIONS AND GROUPS
Training in lived experience leadership and multicultural mental health
Practical learning for lived experience workers, managers, practitioners, people with lived experience and advisory groups. Find a workshop that addresses the conversations, responsibilities and decisions your group needs to handle.
Participants leave with practical tools they can use straight away. The tools are selected or developed for the workshop topic, audience and agreed learning goals.
Commissioned for organisations and groups. Delivered online across Australia. Format and fixed fee agreed for your scope.
Training with Michael Elwan brings together social work practice, management experience that includes designated lived experience workers, and doctoral research into organisational support for lived experience leadership.
Explore training
Jump to a section. Every workshop's audience and practical focus are shown below.
Lived experience worker capability
Lived experience worker capability
Develop practice within designated roles, with attention to role purpose, boundaries, culture and team relationships.
Role Clarity and Boundaries in Teams Clarify what a lived experience role is there to do and where its boundaries sit within a team. Work through competing expectations and prepare conversations that distinguish role purpose from general team duties. For: Lived experience workers and colleagues working alongside designated roles. Practical focus: Explain the role, negotiate boundaries and address competing expectations within a team. Work through situations where expectations about a lived experience role become unclear. Distinguish role purpose from general team duties. Prepare a conversation about competing expectations. Identify issues requiring management action. Commissioned workshop. Learning goals, examples and format agreed for the audience.
Culturally Responsive Lived Experience Practice Consider how culture and identity shape lived experience practice, communication and understandings of recovery. Examine the assumptions that arise when a shared experience is taken to mean a shared understanding. For: Lived experience workers and teams supporting culturally diverse communities. Practical focus: Consider how culture and identity shape the use of lived experience, communication and assumptions about recovery. Discuss how personal experience relates to another person’s cultural context without assuming a shared experience means a shared understanding. Commissioned workshop. Examples and learning goals are shaped around the setting and audience.
Managers and organisations
Build management practice and organisational arrangements that support designated workers and meaningful participation.
Managing and Supporting Lived Experience Workers Support designated lived experience workers with clear expectations, appropriate support and sound management judgement. Examine performance and team issues while respecting the boundaries around personal disclosure. For: Managers and team leaders responsible for designated lived experience workers. Practical focus: Clarify expectations, provide appropriate support and address performance and team issues while respecting personal disclosure boundaries. Distinguish line management from lived experience supervision, and identify when an issue requires individual support, organisational action or both. Commissioned workshop. The scope reflects participants' management responsibilities and workforce setting.
Organising Meaningful Lived Experience Participation Give lived experience participation a clear route into organisational decisions. Work through what people can influence, how advice reaches decision-makers and how the organisation responds. For: Staff designing or coordinating lived experience participation. Practical focus: Define what people can influence, how their advice reaches decision-makers and how the organisation responds. Examine the purpose, authority, support and response arrangements behind a participation activity. Training can help staff identify changes that need organisational approval. Commissioned workshop. A workforce review is not a prerequisite for a defined training need.
Participation and influence
For people drawing on their own lived experience or their experience as a family member, carer or kin, and staff supporting participation. Examples reflect the perspective and role of the group.
Being Heard Prepare conversations with services so you can explain what matters and make a clear request. Practise recording what was said, what was agreed and what still needs an answer. For: People with lived experience who want to communicate effectively with services, and staff supporting them. Practical focus: Prepare a conversation, describe what matters, make a clear request and record what was said, agreed and left unanswered. Tools to take away: A four-step conversation guide and a simple conversation record for decisions, responsibilities, unanswered questions and next steps. Use Prepare, Describe, Ask and Record to organise a service conversation. Keep a note of who said what, what is confirmed, who will act and by when. A short three-line version records what was agreed, what is unanswered and your next step. Previously delivered to Arafmi staff and carers. Examples, prompts and resources are adapted for the commissioned audience. Can be commissioned separately or alongside From Consulted to Heard.
From Consulted to Heard Decide whether an opportunity to influence services, programs or policy is worth your time. Clarify what you can influence and turn experience into a specific suggestion that others can respond to. For: People with lived experience considering opportunities to influence services, programs or policy, and staff supporting their participation. Practical focus: Assess whether an opportunity is worth your time, clarify what you can influence and turn experience into a practical suggestion. Tools to take away: Seven questions to assess an opportunity and prompts for developing a specific, realistic suggestion. Consider change, influence, commitment, support, organisational readiness, permission and the response you can expect. Use the questions to decide whether to take part, clarify, negotiate, pause or decline. There is no score or required answer. Use What happened? What did I need? What could the service try? to shape a suggestion. Check whether it is specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound. Previously delivered to Arafmi staff and carers. Examples, prompts and resources are adapted for the commissioned audience. Being Heard is not a prerequisite.
Lived Experience in Advisory Groups and Committees Prepare to contribute to an advisory group or committee with a clear sense of your role. Work on choosing what to disclose, making a recommendation and asking how your advice will be considered. For: Consumer advisers, carer advisers and members preparing for an advisory or committee role. Practical focus: Clarify your mandate, choose what to disclose and prepare a recommendation that others can respond to. Distinguish your own perspective from a representative mandate, handle disagreement and ask how advice will be considered. Scenarios are adapted for consumer or carer roles. Based on delivered teaching. Personal disclosure is optional.
Multicultural mental health and supervision
For practitioners, supervisors and teams working across culture, identity and mental health.
Supporting Mental Health in Men from CaLD Backgrounds Explore mental health conversations with men from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds. Consider how masculinity, migration, family responsibility and service experiences can shape help-seeking and engagement. For: Practitioners and teams working with men from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds. Practical focus: Examine how masculinity, migration, family responsibility and service experiences shape help-seeking and mental health conversations. Consider how these influences affect engagement and the conversations workers need to hold, without treating culture as a set of fixed characteristics. Delivered program. Commissioned delivery is scoped to the workforce and setting.
Across Generations: Practical Tools for Mental Health Conversations in CaLD Families Open mental health conversations with culturally diverse families where migration, identity or family expectations make discussion difficult. Work with communication barriers and intergenerational silence in the family context. For: Social workers and teams working with culturally diverse families. Practical focus: Open conversations where migration, identity, family expectations and intergenerational silence shape how mental health is discussed. Work with the family context and communication barriers that can make mental health conversations difficult. Delivered program. Previously delivered for the Australian Association of Social Workers (AASW) as a three-hour live online workshop. A new commission's format is agreed separately.
Supervision That Sees Me: Culturally Responsive Supervision for CaLD Social Workers Bring culture, identity and power into supervision conversations with culturally diverse social workers. Examine what supervisees can raise and how the wider organisation shapes those conversations. For: Supervisors, managers and practice leads supporting culturally diverse social workers. Practical focus: Address culture, identity and power in supervision without leaving the supervisee responsible for educating the supervisor. Examine supervision conversations and the organisational context that shapes what workers can raise. Delivered program, previously delivered for the AASW as a three-hour live online workshop. This is training in supervision. Ongoing professional supervision is a separate service.
Recovery and suicide response
Related teaching for defined learning needs, matched to participants' roles and responsibilities.
Diversity, Recovery and Lived Experience in Mental Health Consider how diversity and lived experience shape recovery, relationships and service responses. Develop a shared discussion of recovery-oriented practice that fits your learning or workplace setting. For: Mental health learners and teams considering recovery-oriented practice. Practical focus: Examine how diversity and lived experience shape recovery, relationships and service responses. Develop a shared discussion of lived experience, diversity and recovery within the intended learning or practice setting. Based on presentations delivered to Hader Institute of Education learners. Scope and examples agreed for each commission.
Suicide and Self Harm Response Consider how to respond when you are concerned about suicide or self harm. Clarify when to seek further support or escalate, with the depth of teaching matched to the audience's role and responsibilities. For: Learners and staff requiring response training appropriate to their role. Practical focus: Consider how to respond to concern and when to seek additional support or escalate within the setting. The audience’s responsibilities determine the depth and scope of teaching. Based on delivered Hader teaching. This is not ASIST, safeTALK or Mental Health First Aid certification.
Testimonials
Feedback from participants and organisers
SCOPE AND BOUNDARIES
Commissioning and delivery
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Commissioning and adaptation
Custom programme development begins once the learning goals, preparation, delivery format and fee have been agreed in writing.
Training is quoted as a fixed fee covering the agreed preparation, tailoring, materials and delivery. Where material new content is needed, scoping and design are paid components, agreed before development begins. Recording, reuse and additional reporting are separately agreed and priced.
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What is included
Case-based learning, reflective practice, practical tools, culturally responsive communication, and application.
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Experience and recognition
My delivery includes AASW, Hader Institute, WA Recovery College Alliance and national webinars. Through my ALIVE Co-Lead, Carer, Family and Kinship Group role, I helped run Emergent Ecosystems with fellow co-leads on 24 September 2026: four networks, 57 participants online and in person.
I am the winner of the 2026 Australian Mental Health Prize, Lived Experience category, and the 2025 AASW Social Worker of the Year.
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Enquiry
Share the organisation, who the training is for, the learning need and your timeframe. Participant numbers, delivery preference and budget are optional.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
PROFESSIONAL STANDING
Michael Elwan
Winner, 2026 Australian Mental Health Prize
Lived Experience category