Lived and Living Experience at Heart

What is LLEAH?

Lived and Living Experience at Heart, or LLEAH, is an organisational support program for Victoria’s mental health and alcohol and other drug (AOD) sectors, and encompasses the consumer and family, carer and supporter LLE workforces.

It aims to enhance organisational capacity, ensuring the invaluable contributions of LLE workers are recognised, valued, and supported, and increase employee engagement and retention while creating career pathways and development opportunities. 

The program also seeks to improve outcomes for consumers and their families/supporters.

LLEAH is one of a number of initiatives supported by the Department to elevate and embed LLEW following the Royal Commission into Victoria’s Mental Health System.

The Department provides development opportunities for LLEWs in the AOD treatment, harm reduction and mental health sectors, with more than $51 million invested since 2020.

Be part of an Australian first for LLEW

The Learning Collaborative (TLC) is a ground-breaking workforce development initiative for mental health and drug and alcohol service delivery organisations in Victoria. It is designed for agencies interested in establishing a Lived and Living Experience Workforce (LLEW) or evolving their existing LLEW supports and effectiveness. 

Expressions of interest to participate in The Learning Collaborative 2027 open soon.  

TLC, provided at no cost to participating organisations, includes co-learning opportunities, workshops, tailored organisational support, mentoring, and reflective practice.  Evidence-based course materials draw on discipline-specific frameworks developed for the Victorian context. The 12-month program also offers a unique opportunity to learn directly with LLE leaders from Yale University, US, alongside state, national and international experts including SHARC, the lead agency for this program. 

TLC is designed to improve organisational capacity to integrate lived experience and enable the contributions of people with LLE to be recognised, valued and supported. It aims to increase employee engagement and retention and create career pathways and development opportunities which in turn improve experiences and outcomes for service users and their loved ones. 

Fifty participants have completed TLC, which is part of SHARC’s Lived and Living Experience At Heart (LLEAH) initiative, since its launch in November 2024. More than 90 per cent of TLC graduates report (Source: The Lived and Living Experience Workforce Learning Collaborative (TLC) Cohort 1 Feedback Survey (January 2026)  greater ability to influence organisational culture, systems and processes. 

Ninety four per cent would recommend the program to colleagues, citing increased understanding of sustainable LLEW development and opportunities to learn from and network with other organisations. TLC graduates also report leading transformational change across their organisations, winning executive support and embedding LE expertise at all levels. 

Want to be notified when the EOI process opens for the 2027 TLC program?

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"Incredibly Empowering"
“When we applied for TLC, Anglicare’s peer work experience was in its infancy, so we were keen to expand our learning and knowledge base. In terms of what worked for me with the program, I could listen to those lectures almost all day. They were phenomenal. Also, the validation of our work and having the opportunity to see what is being done elsewhere was just incredibly empowering..."
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"I particularly loved the site visits and that it was just Anglicare and SHARC and Yale. I found that really useful in that it was us able to really talk about our Anglicare experience, what we were currently doing, what we were hoping to do. And then there were some additional little offshoots of projects that came from that. We [also met with] Yale to get additional advice and some extra resources specific to our needs. That was useful in pushing us a bit further, pushing the envelope in our learning. Each participant organisation gets that very nuanced feedback and support.  I would certainly recommend the program to others.” - LLEAH graduate Amy Youl, Anglicare
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"Massive reflective journey"
“Odyssey's participation in The Learning Collaborative (TLC) was very intentional in the sense that we wanted to learn and understand more deeply what it means to be an organisation with designated lived and living experience roles. Odyssey was very uniquely placed in terms of not actually having any designated lived and living experience roles, so the most positive part was identifying that we're an organisation with a lot of lived experience within it..."
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"...It’s been this massive reflective journey of what are we doing with all that knowledge, how are we utilising it, how are we valuing it, how are we supporting it? That's gone all the way up to the executive and it's a continuing conversation.” - LLEAH graduate Aaron Freeman, Odyssey Victoria
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Want to know more about the LLEAH Program? Reach out to us today:

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