Lived Experience Workforce Development Strategy

Lived Experience is an integral part of the Open Arms workforce.

Lived Experience Professionals enable us to deliver world class mental health and wellbeing support for veterans, current serving Australian Defence Force members and their immediate families.

Open Arms Lived Experience Workforce Development Strategy is a blueprint for how we intend to continue to support, nurture and professionally develop our already highly skilled workforce to provide ongoing mental health support guided by the Open Arms’ Model of Care.

It also sets out our organisational structure and the roles and functions of our Lived Experience Workforce to ensure that we continue to meet the current and future needs of our clients.

Meet our workforce

Our Lived Experience Workforce has continued to play a key role in supporting veterans, their families, clinicians and community providers to promote wellbeing, recovery, hope and connection since the Community and Peer Program was launched nationally in 2019.

Our Lived Experience Professionals are made up of veterans, family members or those who have military family connections. They utilise their lived experience of mental health recovery, ADF service and/or ADF family life, to support Open Arms’ clients and bring lived expertise into a range of services throughout the division.

As highly valued members of our workforce, they also play a vital role in helping to de-stigmatise mental illness in the veteran and wider communities.

The Strategy