Ahpra Accreditation Committee Appointment: From the Margins to the Centre

This week, something happened that still feels surreal to write. I have been appointed to the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency (Ahpra) Board’s Accreditation Committee; a role that brings lived experience leadership and cultural safety into the heart of national health governance.

Even as I type these words, I pause. Because this isn’t just a professional milestone - it’s a deeply personal one. It’s a reflection of a journey that began not in boardrooms or lecture theatres, but in hospital corridors, and at kitchen tables where survival was the only plan.

This appointment isn’t just for me. It’s for everyone who has ever been made invisible in healthcare systems that were never built with them in mind.

Accreditation sounds technical - and it is. But beneath the policies, standards, and procedures sits one fundamental question: “Who gets to decide what safe, ethical, and competent healthcare looks like?”

The Ahpra Accreditation Committee plays a pivotal role in answering that question. It advises National Boards, and accreditation authorities on how health practitioners are trained, how education programs are structured, and how standards are set and evaluated.

This work doesn’t just impact universities or training bodies - it shapes the quality of care every person in Australia receives. It influences whether practitioners are trained to listen, to understand trauma, to practise cultural humility, and to deliver care that is not just clinically competent but relationally and culturally safe.

From Compliance to Transformation

Ahpra Accreditation Committee's work isn’t about gatekeeping; it’s about transformation. It’s about asking bold questions like:

• How do we move beyond clinical competence to develop relational capability - empathy, humility, and the ability to hold complexity?

• How do we prepare practitioners for the realities of working with people who have been marginalised, traumatised, or harmed by the very systems meant to care for them?

• How do we ensure cultural safety isn’t a checkbox but a non-negotiable foundation - especially for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities and culturally and linguistically diverse (CaLD) communities?

• How do we embed the voices of lived experience - not as an afterthought, but as core contributors to education design, accreditation, and system governance?

  
  

What This Means to Me

My appointment to the Ahpra Accreditation Committee represents a profound shift; a recognition that lived experience is not anecdotal; it’s expertise. It’s a way of knowing that systems desperately need if they are ever to be truly safe, just, and responsive.

I come to this role as a proud migrant, as someone from a CaLD background, as a suicide-loss survivor, as a carer, as a social worker, and as a PhD candidate researching lived experience leadership in mental health systems.

And I bring with me every story, every injustice, every lesson that my own journey - and the journeys of those I work alongside - have taught me.

My hope is that this role allows me to continue advocating for:

• Anti-racism embedded as a standard, not an optional learning outcome.

• Flexible, culturally safe education models that reflect the needs of diverse students and communities.

• Recognition of lived experience leadership as a valid, valued, and vital part of the health workforce; not just in mental health, but across all professions.

• Accreditation processes that are not just about compliance but about outcomes that centre dignity, cultural safety, and relational care.

  
  

I share this news not as a personal achievement, but as a reminder of what is possible when we refuse to be silent. When we honour our scars as sources of wisdom. When we believe that those most impacted by systems must lead the change within them.

To everyone who has walked alongside me - whether in grief, in advocacy, in research, or in community - this appointment belongs to all of us.

Let’s keep going.

Based in Perth, WA, LEXs provides telehealth counselling across Australia for individuals, couples, and NDIS participants. Services extend to Social Work supervision, Peer Work supervision, training, and keynote speaking on men’s mental health, CaLD community wellbeing, and culturally responsive suicide prevention; helping people and organisations make mental-health care more compassionate, inclusive, and effective. LEXs provides services across Australia, supporting clients in Perth, Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane, and beyond. To learn more about our work across Australia, visit LEXs' services page.