LELAN | Lived Experience Leadership & Advocacy Network

LELAN is the independent peak body in South Australia by, for and with people with lived experience of mental distress, social issues or injustice. Our purpose is to amplify the voice, influence and leadership of people with lived experience to drive systemic change. LELAN has led philanthropic, state and federally funded projects as well as completed commissioned pieces of work. LELAN’s systemic advocacy targets the mental health and social sectors in South Australia, whilst our thought leadership and expertise on lived experience expertise and leadership is borderless. By centring the experiences, collective insights and solution ideas of people with lived experience in all of our work, as well as being immersed in the lived experience community from grassroots to strategic and governance levels, LELAN demonstrates the principles, practices and change dynamics that the social sector is calling for and desperately needs. Because of our strong and trusted relationships with people in the lived experience community we are able to have deeper conversations about things that matter, drawing our collective experiences and action together in purposeful ways. LELAN was founded in 2017 and the organisation received its first funding in 2019. Pivotal pieces of work completed in partnership and/or led by LELAN with the lived experience community include the groundbreaking Model of Lived Experience Leadership that launched in 2021, as well as The Lived Experience Governance Framework and A Toolkit to Authentically Embed Lived Experience Governance that were released in July 2023 (all available at www.lelan.org.au/shared-resources).