Supporting Lived Experience Leadership through a strategic partnership with LELAN
23/09/2021
Written by Victoria Halburd
Strategic Partner Mental health & Wellbeing

A two-year strategic partnership between the Fay Fuller Foundation and South Australia’s peak body for Lived Experience (LEx), the Lived Experience and Leadership Advocacy Network (LELAN) is part of our ongoing commitment to supporting organisations that centre the voice of community in their work.

Having come alongside LELAN over the course of their two-year Discovery Grant project Activating lived experience leadership (ALEL), we have seen firsthand how their approach to listening, valuing, and returning power to people with lived experience can inform transformative change to our states mental health system. We also believe that LELAN have a vital role to play in making this much needed change happen.

The strategic partnership is established on a foundation of trust, with gives and gets on both sides. The Foundation will come alongside LELAN to advocate for embedded, meaningful lived experience leadership across the social sector and will support them to seek additional funding that will enable LELAN to continue operating as the peak body for lived experience in South Australia.

“We will continue to support without stifling, recognising, valuing, and advocating for what they do".

LELAN will guide the Foundation and our partners to practically implement the Lived Experience model developed through the ALEL project as we work collaboratively towards real, lasting, and powerful lived experience recognition, leadership, and consideration across the social sector.

 Why LELAN?

  • LELAN and the Foundation are values aligned organisations with a shared vision for a future South Australian mental health system that is compassionate and rights-based

  • We believe it is vitally important for South Australia to have a peak body for LEx like other states across the country

  • We both recognise that people are the experts in their lives and of their own experiences

A Strategic Partnership forms the final stage of the Foundation’s five-year granting cycle in mental health and wellbeing. Strategic partners are selected from our cohort of Discovery Grant partners and is a two-year partnership with untied funding of 100k per year.

Mental Health & Wellbeing Grants

Our mental health and wellbeing grants run on a five-year cycle and are designed to support preventative, community-based responses.
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©Fay Fuller Foundation
We acknowledge the Kaurna people of the Adelaide Plains and the traditional custodians and owners of the lands on which we work and live across Australia. We pay our respects to Elders of the past, present and into the future. We are committed to collaboration that furthers self-determination, as we go forward, we will continue to listen, learn, and be allies for a healing future.