Kayla’s story: our Lived and Living Experience Workforce Framework

In 2024, YSAS launched our Lived and Living Experience Workforce Framework. It has been designed to guide our efforts to develop and incorporate lived and living experience expertise as a formally recognised, applied and supported skill set within our workforce. The framework will enable us to create confidence and safety in practice for employees with lived and living experience expertise and for YSAS management, so that we provide the support and services young people want and need.

The first time Youth Peer Advocate Kayla Marshall met a lived and living experience worker, it changed her life. “I didn’t know that those kinds of roles existed,” she says. “And just the way he was able to use what he’s been through and turn it around in such a positive and helpful way for other people was inspiring.” Kayla says the worker was able to truly empathise with her experiences, and his own story of overcoming mental health struggles gave her hope.

“That’s what inspired me to want to go working in the sector.”

As a Lived-Living Experience worker, Kayla is now helping to implement YSAS’s Lived and Living Experience Framework. Young people have consistently told YSAS that they value lived and living experience workers, and including Lived-Living Experience Expertise into the workforce was a key recommendation of the Royal Commission into Victoria’s Mental Health System. 

Youth Participation Manager Robyn Freestone says YSAS has a long history of youth participation, but has never had a document outlining its approach to embedding a lived and living experience workforce. “Workers and staff need systems to support them,” says Robyn. 

“If a designated lived experience worker comes into the organisation without support systems and processes, they may not have confidence that the organisation has considered how to support them well.”

Robyn says the framework outlines a longer-term vision for organisational change, especially because lived and living experience in the workforce has historically not been formally recognised. “It’s about transformational change,” she says. “It is about valuing lived experience as an expertise that runs equally alongside academic qualifications.”

Kayla and Robyn are currently participating in a Lived and Living Experience Workforce (LLEW) Learning Collaborative run by experts from SHARC (Self Help Addiction Resource Centre), Yale University and LLEW development expert Dr Louise Byrne, and funded by the Department of Health. The collaborative teaches organisations how to best support an LLE Workforce, including around cultural change, recruitment, supervision, retention, and career development.

“We’ll be leading the implementation of things that we learn,” Kayla says. Margarita Benavides, YSAS Senior HR and Projects Officer is also in the collaborative to help ensure HR processes are informed by a lived and living experience lens, alongside Andrea Fernandes, Strategy and Planning Manager and Executive Member, and Lucia Herrera, Youth Peer Advocate providing an LLE and Youth lens to the work. 

Robyn credits the increasing prominence of lived and living experience in workplaces to the hard work of consumers over decades. 

“We stand on the shoulders of giants who have really worked hard to get this stuff in place,” she said. “They’ve worked hard against all sorts of adversity to have lived experience recognised and valued.” 

Kayla says overall, YSAS is incredibly supportive of lived experience workers. “I’ve never worked for an organisation that cares so much about youth participation, and empowering young people who want to work in the sector to pursue lived and living experience roles.”