Hi, my name is Phoebe, I'm Warren Academy's principal author and instructor hare. I’ve a long-lived experience of distress and thriving, I’m a lived experience PEER, a wife, a mother, I’m chocolate and leopard print obsessed, I’m a lover and a fighter! I’m an independent lived experience consultant, trainer, speaker and group facilitator for the mental health sector. I also enjoy a position as a lived experience sessional academic for the School of Allied Health, Curtin University and I’m the owner of Thru the Rabbit Holes and its’ academy, the Warren Academy. My working background includes roles as a Board Director for Consumers of Mental Health Western Australia, roles in executive representation in the public mental health sector as vice chair, subcommittees chair, and project lead under the North Metropolitan Health Service (NMHS) Mental Health Community Advisory Council and a role on the Consumer Engagement Community Advisory Council (peak advisory body to the NMHS Board). I’m often fortunate to be invited to work as a subject matter expert (SME) for Western Australia and beyond and I have worked on several expert panels including; the Australian National Media Reporting Guidelines Panel, some international panels and some Western Australian Mental Health Commission project panels such as the Western Australia Recovery College Model of Service Expert Panel and the Peer Practice Expert Group for the Western Australia LE (Peer) Workforce Development Project (2021 – 2022). I’m a qualified mental health peer support worker and lived experience educator, a certified personal medicine coach (CPMC) under Dr. Patricia Deegan (PDA Faculty U.S.A) and a qualified Alternatives to Suicide (Al2Su/ ATS) support groups facilitator. I work as a national Peer Ambassador for Sane Australia and I’m Co-Chair of a national Consumer Reference Group for Australia National University and the Institute of Communication in Healthcare. More recently, I’m a working group contributor for the Mental Illness Fellowship Australias’ newly launched Finding North Network and I’m also privileged with a voice on the Everymind Words and Images Project until 2023, a project to reduce the stigma around the lived experience of distress and suicide related experiences. An exciting area for development and learning for me since late 2021 and into 2022 is my involvement in both research and knowledge production via my role as a lived experience sessional academic at Curtin University. I’m privileged with a role in PhD research on the subject of how the lived experience voice and service-user perspective is included in social work supervision. I have a direct involvement in the supervision sessions of social work students and will be a co-author in some academic papers during the research. I was also involved in a collaborative partnership project with a faculty in speech pathology researching co-design and capacity to establish a lived experience educators’ unit specific to the speech pathology discipline in the School of Allied Health. The tertiary unit of study will enable educators with a lived and living experience of speech challenges and speech pathology supports to contribute to the education of speech pathologists. My other thrill at the moment is working as the lead author on an academic paper concerning lived experience peer work and following that, I’m excited about my own individual paper concerning ideas around the recovery of wellbeing. Through my commitment to launching the Warren Academy, I've undergone some training in professional online course creation, marketing and branding. I’ve also completed a tertiary introductory training to Formative PREP (Peer Review) and have completed other university teaching quality certificates including Academic Copyright, Academic Integrity, Introduction to Assessment, Professional Learning Essentials and Cyber Security. In preparation for the Warren Academy long-term premium programs of asynchronous delivery, I’ll also be using ongoing access to tertiary training in the reflective practice: developing a teaching style, the pedagogy for teaching and learning, constructive alignment: planning for teaching, active and collaborative learning: facilitating a positive and engaging learning experience, introduction to global learning environments, training modules in feedback for learning and refresher courses. I’m passionate about many things including challenging the stigma around mental distress, championing the recovery of wellbeing, eliminating social injustice and radical mental health sector reform!
