Consultation and Facilitation Services

Empowered Lives aims to raise awareness and educate people about mental health issues, and a big part of that is hearing from people with lived experience. 

We passionately support the principle “Nothing about us, without us”. When developing or delivering services to people with a mental illness, we strongly encourage organisations to consult and involve them in the process. 

Empowered Lives Principal Kirsten Gibbs can develop a consultation and co-design process for your organisation, drawing in other consultants with relevant knowledge and experience, and facilitate workshops and focus groups to hear directly from people with a lived experience of mental illness. 

Kirsten is an experienced facilitator, with extensive experience in running consultations with people with a lived experience of mental illness, and carers of people with a mental illness. She has presented on co-design and consumer participation at the Leading Australian Mental Health Conferences and to NSW Health Mental Health Staff, developed Being – Mental Health and Wellbeing Consumer Advisory Group’s Consumer Participation position statement and processes and attended training on Consumer Co-design. 

She has designed consultation processes, facilitated focus groups on a range of issues, designed and analysed surveys and compiled reports. Examples include: consultation with adolescent inpatients at a psychiatric facility about their experiences while in hospital,  people with severe psycho-social disabilities about their experiences with the NDIS, people with a lived experience of mental illness in regional areas about service provision, individuals and small groups with a lived experience of being secluded or restrained in an in-patient facility, and people with early onset dementia on behalf of an outside market research company. Additional projects have included interviewing people with a lived experience of mental illness and writing first person narratives of their mental health journey, highlighting people’s experiences with mental health services. This work was commissioned by Coordinare – South Eastern NSW Primary Health Network for use in their co-design processes.  

For more information about how Empowered Lives could support you in your consultation processes,

Contact us today for your Consultation and Facilitation needs.