Supporting best practice lived and living experience engagement

Brisbane North PHN collaborated with Lived Experience Australia and lived and living experience (LLE) representatives to develop a Lived and Living Experience Lifecycle Kit for future use across PHN's nationally.

The kit contains best practice policies and processes to support our people to appropriately support those with a LLE working with us on PHN projects and programs.

This work began as a quality improvement initiative in response to feedback from LLE representatives during the latest mental health, alcohol and other drugs (MHAOD) regional planning cycle, but will now expand beyond this sector across all areas of Brisbane North PHN's work.

The design process, facilitated by Lived Experience Australia involved two focus groups and one-on-one phone calls with six LLE representatives, recruited via a criteria based EOI process, that covered various topics including:

• defining the lifecycle and purpose for LLE representation
• identifying strengths, improvements, and capacity-building opportunities and
• examining power dynamics and enablers.

The resulting resource is one that will provide practical guidance and tools to support planning, implementation, reflection and evaluation of LLE engagement activities at Brisbane North PHN.

The kit will be integrated into existing internal resources such as the Brisbane North PHN Engagement and Partnering Toolkit. Launched in February 2024, the broader Engagement and Partnering Toolkit provides a collection of guides, tools and templates that aim at supporting Brisbane North PHN staff in developing and maintaining effective stakeholder relationships – a critical element for our success as a commissioning organisation.

The LLE Lifecycle Kit will soon be shared with all PHNs nationally, and promoted by Lived Experience Australia as a best practice example in the work they support organisations to do as a peak body in the lived and living experience space.