Event description

Co-Designing Better Services: Ethically partnering with lived experience in improvement, evaluation and research

This online workshop will be presented over one half-day session on Thursday 20th of August 2026, from 10am to 1pm.  

Employees or staff of Mindgardens member organisations (UNSW & SESLHD) are able to purchase tickets at a discounted price using your work email and a discount code: CoDesign2026

This highly interactive workshop provides clinicians, quality improvement practitioners, evaluators, and researchers with the ethical foundations and practical tools needed to partner meaningfully with people with lived experience. Participants will explore principles of lived experience involvement, navigate common ethical and practical challenges including consent and remuneration, and learn approaches to sharing power, promoting safety and accessibility, and recognising contributions. Through collaborative case studies, discussion, and practical exercises, participants will build confidence to create collaborative partnerships that strengthen quality improvement, service redesign, evaluation, and research initiatives.

Please note: MindLabs workshops are most successful when they include people from diverse roles, organisations and professional backgrounds. Occasionally we may need to defer individual applications to a later event in order to achieve this balance. 

Workshop Content

• Overview of lived experience involvement in research (rationale and different structures/ways of engaging people with lived experience)
• Exploring power frameworks and what ‘power sharing’ means
• Lived experience participation safety, accessibility, recognition and remuneration, capability and feedback mechanisms
• How to navigate ethical challenges
• Example scenarios and discussion

Workshop facilitator

Jo Farmer is a Lived Experience Consultant. Jo’s focus is to work with organisations to build the capability and capacity of their people to put the person back into the system and restore individuals’ and communities’ autonomy and empowerment. Jo’s work prioritises those who have been marginalised through her approach to evaluation and research, with the aim to ensure people are heard, have power, and can find and build community.

For information, contact the MindLabs Team at mindlabs@mindgardens.org.au