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Bachelor of Arts, Certificate IV in Mental Health Peer Work

Mind Board committees - Program, Practice and Quality (PPaQ) Committee and Sub-Committee.

Current and previous positions – Chair, BEING – Mental Health Consumers; Official Visitor, NSW Official Visitor Program: Lived Experience researcher ALIVE and Charles Sturt University; Deputy Commissioner, NSW Mental Health Commission; Community Advisory Council Member, NSW Mental Health Commission; Mental Health Peer Coordinator, COORDINARE, South Eastern NSW Primary Health Network; Consumer Peer Worker, Illawarra Shoalhaven LHD, Senior Peer Worker, Flourish Australia, Chair, NSW Public Mental Health Consumer Workers Committee; Executive Member, Illawarra Shoalhaven Suicide Prevention Collaborative.

Tim Heffernan is an experienced consumer peer worker who is passionate about the development and support of the peer workforce. He identifies as a person with a lived experience of mental health challenges and recovery, and has held several significant roles in the mental health and wellbeing sector. These include serving as Co-Chair of the National Mental Health Commission’s National Stigma and Discrimination Reduction Strategy Steering Committee and Deputy Co-Chair of the National Peer Workforce Development Guidelines Steering Committee.

Tim is also an award-winning poet and has performed his work at the Wollongong Writers Festival, the Queensland Poetry Festival, and Mad Pride. He co-edits an online space for ‘mad’ writing titled The Clozapine Clinic – the Frater Project, published in the Australian creative arts journal Verity La.