Connection and stories as a model for empowering communities

In this post, Karina Harback shows why “Inspire Connections” offers more than just time with horses—it’s a striking example of what becomes possible when communities are empowered to respond creatively to children’s needs. Partly funded by Communities for Children in Southern Tasmania, this equine-facilitated learning program shows how intelligent support can unlock locally driven, strengths-based initiatives. As a teacher and Equine Facilitated Learning Practitioner, Karina continually adapts the program to create a responsive, safe, and relational space where students develop emotional regulation, self-awareness, and confidence—skills often out of reach in traditional classrooms. At its heart, this is a story about what happens when community, care, and connection come together - and why enabling place-based responses is key to supporting all children to thrive.

No Wrong Door: Why Every Family Deserves a Wendy in the First 1,000 Days

Bernadette Black AM, CEO and Founder of SEED Futures, shares her deeply personal journey from teenage motherhood to national systems change advocate. Reflecting on the transformative impact of one woman’s care and belief in her, she makes a powerful case for reimagining the way Australia supports families in their earliest, most vulnerable days. With warmth and urgency, Black argues that kindness must not depend on chance—it must be built into the system. Through SEED Futures and the Incremental Reform Catalogue, she offers a clear, practical path to make that vision real.

What counts as learning? Rethinking out-of-school time with Children’s University

In a world where even after-school chess is expected to polish a child’s critical thinking résumé, the pressure to prove every moment's utility has reshaped how we talk about education. But what if children themselves have a different idea? This post by Megan Lang explores how Children’s University challenges narrow definitions of learning, and what happens when we start listening to children’s own accounts of joy, curiosity, and connection beyond the classroom.

Lived experience in mental health reform: Valued voice or hollow gesture?

Today Maria Katsonis, a mental health advocate with lived experience of mental health issues, discusses the complexity of including lived experience in mental health reform, warning that organisations and policymakers must be willing to share power if the promise of lived experience is to be realised.

Lived experiencePower to Persuade19 February 2025Lived/consumer experience, mental health

Victoria’s new anti-vilification laws could be a game-changer for mental health

In this week’s blog, Simon Katterl writes about Victoria’s proposed anti-vilification laws and their implications for vilification in mental health.

Advocacy, Policy and governance, Lived experiencePower to Persuade21 November 2024mental health, discrimination, Law

What Do You Do? Hope in Disability Policy Advocacy

As we approach the end of 2024, it seems an appropriate time to reflect on both the progress that has been made in disability equality, but also the things that we all do to protect ourselves and sustain our collective and individual advocacy efforts. In the Spring 2024 Edition of the Canberra Disability Review , Editor Rob Donnelly invited readers to do this, by responding to the question: What do you do that helps you to keep going, and maintain some measure of hope, when progress towards a fairer and more inclusive Australia is under heavy fire?

Advocacy for Inclusion’s Head of Policy, Craig Wallace, and the Disability Leadership Institute’s CEO and Founder, Christina Ryan, shared their perspectives.

Unseen Impact: How Unpaid Caregiving Shapes Health and Lives

Care-giving can be a rich and complex experience that is both rewarding and challenging. Enrico Pfeifer (@EnricoPfeifer1), a PhD Candidate at the University College London, knows this first-hand. Today, he explores his doctoral research on the impact that care-giving can have on people’s health, and how we can support care-givers to stay healthy.

'Care is in everything we do and everything we are': the work of Indigenous women

Gender, Lived experiencePower to Persuade2 October 2024care work, Indigenous issues, women and work

We should be looking at what we can add to children’s lives instead of what we take away

This week Prime Minister Anthony Albanese announced the government's plan to introduce legislation to ban younger teens from social media. Today, Cadhla O’Sullivan (@CadhlaOSull) and Sharon Bessell (@BessellSharon) from the Children’s Policy Centre at ANU, highlight what other approaches are worth considering.

Advocacy, Lived experience, Service DeliveryPower to Persuade13 September 2024Children, social media

Prioritizing Child Safety Over Gold Medals: Learning from Abuse Survivors in Sports

The whole world watches the Olympics and Paralympics, and national pride and achievement are front and centre. In today’s post, VicHealth postdoctoral research fellow Aurélie Pankowiak (@AureliePanko) of Victoria University (@iHealthSportVU) argues more resources need to be invested to ensure sport participants are safe from abuse. Learning from lived experience would allow for trauma-informed guidelines for both prevention and response and enable the creation of safer sport organisations.

Lived experiencePower to Persuade25 July 2024child abuse, Policy making, Lived/consumer experience

Firsthand experience of migration, homelessness and disability reveals shortcomings in access to political participation: Student reflections on power and governance

Policy and governance, Lived experiencePower to Persuade9 July 2024politics and democracy, housing and homelessness, migration, mental health, Disability

Australia’s response to preventing forced marriage should begin with listening to the needs of young women.

Gender, Lived experience, Policy and governancePower to Persuade5 July 2024women, Women's safety, violence against women

We need a more humane budget - now more than ever

Antipoverty Centre, Lived experience, Policy and governancePower to Persuade10 May 2024JobSeeker, housing

As a single parent, Jobseeker is brutal. Government should come up with a better 'Placesaver' to help me into my next job

Advocacy, Lived experiencePower to Persuade24 April 2024welfare conditionality, welfare reform

How international recognition of cultural practices could be a new way to protect refugees

Camps are dynamic, culturally significant spaces. New research from the University of Newcastle proposes the significance of these cultural practices may provide an alternative pathway to protection.

Transitioning out of youth involvement roles: an interview with a Youth Involvement Officer and Senior Patient and Public Involvement and Engagement Lead

Within mental health research and service delivery, involvement of experts by experience has become increasingly common. The involvement of experts by experience allows for the design and delivery of research that is of higher quality and more rigorous.

Transitioning out of youth-focussed lived experience groups is a matter that is not well understood and, for many reasons, complex. It can be difficult to transition from the role of being a young contributor to research into a professional in the Public and Patient Involvement space. Working in lived experience roles, either as ‘lived experience practitioners’, ‘peer support workers’, ‘PPI facilitators’ or ‘involvement officers’ can be complex and the relationships you hold in these spaces vary depending on your positioning within either the group or the organisation (Carr, 2019).

In this blog we explore the experience of Beckye, a former Youth Advisory Group (YAG) member for the University of Birmingham’s Institute for Mental Health as she begins the making this transition into an employee in a Youth Involvement Officer. The blog takes the form of responses to an with Beckye (Youth Involvement Officer) and Niyah (Senior Patient and Public Involvement and Engagement Lead). The interview offers early reflections that may be of use to organisations or individuals who may be supporting folk undertaking these transitions or in the process of negotiating the transition themselves.