To the growing AAPW community,
August is shaping up to be a big month for the AAPW. Membership opens in the first week of August, we'll be at TheMHS Conference from 4 to 7 August, and we're hosting our final online public information and Q&A session on 12 August. We're also excited to share that expressions of interest are now open for the new Lived Experience Consultant Registry. Read on for all the details, and hear from some of the peer workers we've been speaking with across the country.
We're excited to share that AAPW membership will open in the first week of August, coinciding with the launch of our new website. We'll be in touch via this mailing list as soon as membership is open.
Built by peer workers, for peer workers, membership is your opportunity to be part of a national community working together to strengthen recognition, representation and support for peer work across Australia. As a member, you will have access to practical resources, support and opportunities to connect with peers from across Australia. You will also be part of a collective voice advocating for stronger recognition, rights, standards and working conditions for peer workers.
Support: Access resources, guidance and advocacy you need to thrive as a peer worker.
Connection: Come together to share and learn from peer workers across Australia
Influence: Be part of a collective national voice, strengthening advocacy for peer workers and peer work.
Initially, membership will be free, giving peer workers the opportunity to experience the benefits before a paid membership structure is introduced in late 2027.
The Mental Health Services (TheMHS) Conference is just around the corner, running from 4 to 7 August 2026. TheMHS brings together people in various professions across the mental health services sector, including peer workers, researchers, educators and policymakers to explore the fundamentals of human need, including hope, inclusion and connection.
If you're attending, come and find us at the National Mental Health Consumer Alliance stand, where you can:
Grab a fidget ring in your favourite colour
Take some time out with our colouring in activity
Wear your lived experience proudly by getting your make up done (all genders welcome!)
Find out more about membership in the AAPW and ask us your questions
We'd love to see you there.
Over the past month, we've been interviewing peer workers from across Australia to hear about their experiences and inform the AAPW's priorities. We've been genuinely moved and inspired by what we've heard.
Here is some of what peer workers have shared with us.
The power of peer work
"The difference peer work makes is that it helps people to feel seen, heard and understood in ways that other professions might have to work a lot harder at. If you're going to be lost in a forest without a map, isn't it better to be lost with company who might have been there beforehand? You can meet people that feel overwhelmed and lost and alone in all sorts of ways, and you can sort of go, let's just figure it out together." Suicide Prevention Peer Worker, South Australia
"Helping people to learn about themselves, to accept themselves, to find out their strengths, to learn their potential, and to have hope for the future. Watching people start to reach their potential, that's what I love about peer work, that's what's so rewarding, and I'll learn from them as well, continue to learn from other people. And that's helped me as well in my own recovery, too."
Consumer Peer Worker, Tasmania
"The difference peer work makes, just in relation to suicide prevention specifically, I call it the golden thread or golden connection. It's just that lived experience. Having somebody to speak to that you know has experienced similar things, and you're not having to explain experiences because they actually get it."
Suicide Prevention Peer Worker, New South Wales
The challenges peer workers face
"It's an integral part of what we do, sharing our experiences, building that mutuality through that shared humanity, and so being questioned on our roles and being made to second-guess our role and our value really compounds that mental load, and that's one of the biggest challenges peer workers face. Basically, we're being asked to bring ourselves, and then being questioned on it, it makes it extremely difficult. I've heard several peer workers having their lived experience weaponised against them. If they start pushing back against certain things, people say, oh, are you feeling unwell?"
Family Carer Peer Worker, New South Wales
"One of the biggest challenges is having an unclear or lack of standard scope of practice. I had someone say to me once, the peer workers, they could be cleaning the toys in the sensory room. And I went, that's not part of their role. Why is it that peers are asked to fill in for admin more than any other profession? This has an impact on peer workers' ability to negotiate fair pay for fair work… And it leads to this constant devaluing, and it means that people literally can't afford to stay in these roles sometimes because of cost of living and the fact that they are so poorly paid so often."
Suicide Prevention Peer Worker, South Australia
"Some of the biggest challenges faced by peer workers are psychosocial safety issues, moral injury and role clarity. Role clarity is really important, not only for the peer worker knowing what their job will be, but also for other people in the organisation to understand what the peer does. I've seen a lot of people experiencing just exclusion, feeling like no one else in their workplace understands or values what they do. Every time they speak up, they're seen as causing issues, seen as a nuisance. Which is very, very challenging for the peer, and not actually productive for the rest of the organisation either."
Consumer Peer Worker, Western Australia
Why the AAPW matters
"What it means to me to have a national association comes down to two words: recognition and respect. I feel like the establishment of the association is a movement in its own right, which brings together and recognises this discipline as what it is. I'd hope that there's more awareness and understanding about peer work, not just in the mental health space, but in our communities, everywhere. If I tell a friend who works in IT that I'm a peer worker, they'd have no idea what I'm saying. But if I tell them someone's a psychiatrist, they'd know. People don't even know who we are."
Consumer Peer Worker, Victoria
"The first thing that comes to my mind when asked what it means to have a national association is recognition and legitimacy. A lot of other disciplines have their own associations, discipline-specific bodies, like social workers and nurses. I also feel a sense of hope towards growing the discipline, both in terms of numbers and a structure and framework underneath it to allow it to flourish."
Family Carer Peer Worker, New South Wales
"Professionalisation doesn't mean we lose who we are as peers or lose our values. What we do is develop what professional means for us, and that creates scaffolding for us to be a very embedded, integrated and safe workforce. If you can get professionalism to coexist with that uniqueness that is peer work, then it's going to be gold. We can't replicate what other disciplines have done because we're not the same."
Consumer Peer Worker, Queensland
We will continue listening, learning and co-designing the AAPW alongside peer workers across Australia.
Thank you for being a part of it.
The National Mental Health Consumer Alliance (NMHCA) is establishing a national registry of Lived Experience Consultants and Contractors, Peer Workers, Allies, and technical specialists to support paid contract and backfill opportunities across Australia's mental health consumer peak body network, including:
Australian Association of Peer Workers
The National Mental Health Consumer Alliance (NMHCA)
Mental Health Lived Experience Peak Queensland (MHLEPQ)
Mental Health Lived Experience Tasmania (MHLET)
BEING - Mental Health Consumers (NSW)
Victorian Mental Illness Awareness Council (VMIAC)
ACT Mental Health Consumer Network (ACTMHCN)
Lived Experience Northern Territory (LENT)
Consumers of Mental Health WA (CoMHWA)
South Australian Lived Experience Leadership & Advocacy Network (LELAN)
If you have lived expertise, allied experience, or technical skills aligned with lived experience values and you are available for short notice or project-based work, we want to hear from you.
Opportunities span six domains including:
Peer workforce
Policy
Advocacy
Communications
Operations
Corporate services.
Learn more and submit an EOI via the links below:
Disclaimer and Terms and Conditions
Our first online public information and Q&A session in July was completely sold out — thank you to everyone who came along.
If you missed out, there is still time to register for our second and final session on Wednesday 12 August, 5 PM – 6 PM AEST. We'll share an update on our progress, including more detail on membership and our key initiatives and projects, and answer your questions.
A recording of the second session will be made available afterwards, and we'll publish responses to any questions we weren't able to address across either session in the weeks that follow.