Manager, Lived Experience

Location: Melbourne | CBD

Job type: Full time / Until 26 June 2026

Organisation: Health

**Salary**: $130,673 - $174,869

Occupation: Administration/Secretarial

Reference: VG/DH/SB/MHWC/1786480

The Department of Health plays a critical role in the Victorian health system and is responsible for shaping it to meet the health needs of all Victorians. We’re focused on supporting Victorians to be as healthy as they can; whether through alerting them to seasonal risks like thunderstorm asthma, notifying them of contact with communicable diseases, safeguarding their drinking water, developing the best health, wellbeing and care facilities in the world, being at the forefront of mental health and wellbeing treatment or accelerating medical research. It’s all part of the way we partner with the community to help every individual lead a healthy life.

**About the role**:
This designated lived experience role is responsible for the management of the Lived Experience Stream within the Mental Health and Wellbeing Commission. This includes line management, project oversight, and general duties including strategic development, budget planning, project management, stakeholder engagement, and liaison across the organisation.

The Lived Experience Stream provides critical internal consultancy across the full range of Mental Health and Wellbeing Commission functions (includes complaints, stakeholder engagement and performance monitoring). The Lived Experience Stream is also building a portfolio of work through a range of projects related to functions set out in the _Mental Health and Wellbeing Act 2022_.

**You are**:

- Someone with lived experience of mental illness or psychological distress
- Able to work from a lived experience perspective
- Able to manage and support organisational change processes within business areas
- Good at solving complex problems.
- An excellent communicator and able to liaise with a range of stakeholders and represent the Commission.

**About us**:
At the Victorian Department of Health we want a future where Victorians are the healthiest people in the world. A Victoria where our children and people thrive, our workplaces are productive and safe, and our communities are more connected.

We see it as our job to support Victorians to stay healthy and safe. And to deliver a world-class healthcare system that ensures every single Victorian can access safe, quality care that leads to better health outcomes for all.

**How you'll make a difference**:
**Suitable applicants will be able to demonstrate**:
**Knowledge and skills**:

- Strategic planning: inspires a sense of purpose and direction within context; understands the organisation's current and future role; and considers the ramifications of issues and long
- term impact of work being done.
- Systems thinking: formulates potential courses of action to achieve objectives based on an in-depth understanding of the business environment and its systems; and establishes an integrated perspective of their organisation's services and identifies the leverage points where intervention will add value
- Stakeholder management: identifies and manages a range of complex and often competing needs of senior executives and leaders; identifies issues in common for one or more stakeholders and uses them to build mutually beneficial partnerships; and finds innovative solutions to resolve stakeholder issues.
- Project management: consults, liaises with, and influences key stakeholders; produces detailed project plans where objectives are clearly defined and action steps for achieving them are clearly specified; monitors performance against objectives and manages project risks and issues; ensures project objectives are met.
- Service Excellence: ability to plan and design delivery strategies that ensure outcomes of appropriate quality are delivered within time and resource parameters. Proven experience in managing risk and business continuity to ensure that threats to delivery are identified and addressed efficiently ahead of their occurrence and to evaluate operational progress.
- Self-management: invites feedback on own behaviour and impact; uses new knowledge or information about self to build a broader understanding of own behaviour and the impact it has on others; understands strong emotional reactions and seeks ways to manage them more effectively.

**Personal qualities**:

- Creativity and innovation: generates new ideas, draws on a range of information sources to identify new ways of doing things, actively influences events and promotes ideas, translates creative ideas into workplace improvements, reflects on experience and is open to new ways to improve practice.
- Decisiveness: takes rational and sound decisions based on a consideration of the facts and alternatives; makes tough decisions, sometimes with incomplete information; evaluates rational and emotional elements of situations; makes quick decisions where required; commits to a definite course o