Training

Evidence based, informed by 15 years of international research, and aligned to the National Lived Experience (Peer) Workforce Development Guidelines (Louise was lead writer and researcher). Our Lived Experience Training includes:

• Understanding and defining lived experience, Lived Expertise and our unique discipline (literacy building)
• Organisational readiness and workplace cultural change
• Practical understanding, steps and tool for employers, HR/People and Culture, colleagues, allies, and Lived Experience workers
• Capacity building for emerging and existing Lived Experience leaders and active allies

Learn more about Louise’s experience in teaching and course design below, or click here to check out our Lived Experience Training Options. 

Louise was the first full-time Lived and Living experience academic in Australia and for seven years led the co-ordination, design and teaching of a Lived Experience-led course on Recovery concepts and practice. Under Louise’s leadership, the course grew rapidly from a 25 student a year elective to a 1000 student per year core subject, taken by all undergraduate nursing students and offered at Post Graduate level.

Significant empirical research was conducted and found this training had transformative impacts on the attitudes and preferences of students towards people accessing services, and to working in mental health. Louise brings this deep knowledge of pedagogy (approach to teaching and learning), online learning and influencing attitudinal change to the development of training to build understanding of Lived Expertise, organisational readiness, workplace cultural change management and Lived Experience leadership.

Articles for both quantitative and qualitative studies on this training are linked at the bottom of the page if you’d like to learn more. 

In recent years, Louise has focused on boutique training for organisations and government departments.

“We engaged Louise to deliver Lived Experience literacy sessions for our whole Mental Health and Wellbeing
Division, Victorian Department of Health as way to grow understanding about the difference between having
lived experience and developing and making use of lived expertise. She is able to engage people in a way that
is inspiring, informative, warm and authoritative. Louise is able to draw on decades of research and evidence
along with her own lived experience. Feedback from the division has been overwhelmingly positive and people
have subsequently asked for further opportunities to learn from her”.

Lived Experience Branch – Mental Health and Wellbeing Division, Department of Health Victoria

Go to ‘What People Love‘ on our Lived Experience Training website to see more testimonials.