In 2020, the Victorian Department of Health (DH) provided initial funding to increase the availability of consumer and family/carer perspective supervision to the lived experience workforces, kicking off the Access to Supervision Project.
Each financial year since then, CMHL has been supported to appoint a lived experience project lead to coordinate the project with partners VMIAC and Tandem. This group determines and manages the processes for promoting the project, approving supervisees and supervisors, and organizing payments.
With the opening of the mental health and wellbeing locals, and the mental health and wellbeing connect centres (for families, carers, and supporters), demand for discipline specific supervision increased significantly across the 2023/2024 financial year.
Discipline Specific Supervision
Supervisees will typically be approved for up to $1,500 worth of discipline specific supervision per financial year.
To be eligible for Department of Health funding under the Access to Supervision Project, with an approved supervisor, applicants must be employed by a Victorian government-funded mental health service as a Lived Experience Worker. Applications for approval can be obtained by emailing peerinside@cmhlorg.au
Upon being approved, supervisees then search the CMHL LEW supervisor database and choose an approved supervisor from their own discipline to approach for supervision. They then notify us of any agreements made.
By November of 2023, only five months after opening this round, capacity was reached in the consumer discipline, an impressive increase of 36% more consumer workers receiving supervision in the program, compared to the previous year.
The increase in family/carer uptake was initially slower but there was quite an increase at the commencement of the 2024 calendar year showing an increase of 19% on the previous year.
Lived Experience Workforce Supervision Database
CMHL has developed and continues to manage a consumer and family/carer perspective supervision database. https://supervision.cmhl.org.au/
Any supervisor can be listed on the CMHL supervision database.
To be an APPROVED SUPERVISOR under the Access to Supervision Project, supervisors must fulfill certain criteria which can be found here.
As of January 2024, twenty-seven consumer supervisors and thirteen family/carer supervisors have been listed as approved supervisors in the database.
With ongoing consumer perspective supervision training conducted by Inside Out & associates, and the new family/carer perspective supervision training conducted by Tandem, it is anticipated that there will continue to be an increase in the number of supervisors approved to deliver into the program.
Evaluation
February of 2024 will see us commence evaluation of the 2023- 2024 project.
The Access to Supervision Project is coordinated for people with lived experience, by people with lived experience, so it is crucial that any evaluation is guided by people with lived experience.
The primary purposes for evaluating ASP are:
- To allow DH to understand the impacts of the program and support them in making decisions about its future funding
- To understand what has been effective about the program in achieving positive outcomes and what could be improved on going forward
We look forward to sharing the evaluation results with you.
Please contact peer.inside@cmhl.org.au for any queries about the program.
Enquiries
Access to Supervision Project Lead / Supervision Workstream Coordinator
