6 minute read

Mind’s Lived Experience Workforce Manager helps bring Mind’s vision for our lived experience workforce to reality. 

Newly appointed in the role, Daisy Gleeson will guide staff, leadership teams and stakeholders to develop their competencies in consumer or family and carer perspective, lived and living expertise, and peer work. 

Daisy said it is important to recognise the training and commitment that people bring to this kind of work.  

“Having lived experience doesn’t make you a lived experience worker on its own. Lived experience work is very nuanced and skilled and it needs to be recognised as a profession more often than it is,” she said. 

“It is challenging and complex work. A lived experience peer worker is asked constantly look inside themselves and consider how they are responding to the person they are supporting. They need to be able to sit with discomfort and reflect.” 

The Lived Experience Workforce Manager works with the entire workforce, not just those who have lived experience, Daisy explained. 

“You’re building the expertise of people to use their lived experience and you’re also upskilling the rest of the workforce - building their literacy around lived experience so they are allies and everyone is working to complement each other,” she said.  

“For example, what support does a manager need if they don’t have lived experience and are managing staff who do, so they can give their staff the right support? You’re building relationships across the organisation so we build a workforce that feels supported, understood and is able to thrive.” 

The Lived Experience Workforce Manager role is designed to help achieve the deliverables of the Mind Lived Experience Strategy and is informed by the Mind Peer Work Framework

Daisy will spearhead codesign and coproduction in all aspects of services including program evaluation, planning, decision making and service design. 

Her role will draw on lived expertise approaches informed by a commitment to social change and human rights to shape the delivery of lived experience workforce development programs. 

Leading the development of Mind’s Peer Cadet Program is a key element of the role, helping to establish the lived experience workforce of tomorrow. 

Daisy comes to Mind with years of experience as a national Intentional Peer Support Trainer, working in community and clinical mental health and managing lived experience workforces for a variety of organisations. 

I’m proud to be working in an organisation where I – and other people with lived experience - feel safe and welcome to bring their full selves to their work every day.
- Daisy Gleeson

She said she is excited to be working in lived experience workforce management again in an organisation where people with lived experience are enabled not just to survive but to thrive. 

“When I’ve introduced my history of mental distress and being neurodivergent into the conversation (at Mind) it’s been understood with acceptance and encouragement,” she said.  

“I’m proud to be working in an organisation where I – and other people with lived experience - feel safe and welcome to bring their full selves to their work every day. Mind has created this broader culture where people can be vulnerable without being treated as fragile.” 

If this article raises concerns for you, please call Lifeline on 13 11 14. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders can also call 13 YARN (13 92 76) a 24/7 national crisis support telephone service staffed by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.  

If you would like more information about Mind services near you, please contact us via Mind Connect or phone: 1300 286 463.