If you or someone you love has navigated the mental health system, you already know something that policy documents are only now catching up to: there is a kind of understanding that can't be taught from a textbook. It comes from having walked the road yourself.
At C in Coaching, lived experience isn't a line on a website. It's the ground we stand on.
The law is catching up to what we've always known
In September 2023, Victoria's Mental Health and Wellbeing Act 2022 came into effect, replacing the Mental Health Act 2014. It was one of the central recommendations of the Royal Commission into Victoria's Mental Health System — a once-in-a-generation reckoning with how our state cares for people in distress.
One of the most significant things the new Act does is write lived experience into law. It includes a lived experience principle that formally recognises people with lived and living experience of mental illness — along with their families, carers and supporters — as valuable leaders and active partners in the system, not simply recipients of care. And it backs that principle with real structure: designated lived-experience leadership roles at the highest levels, including within the new Mental Health and Wellbeing Commission, on the Regional Mental Health and Wellbeing Boards, and across the bodies shaping youth mental health.
We're a registered NDIS provider. That means we're checked and audited, and we have to meet strict rules for safety and quality. For you, that's peace of mind — your support is safe, and you're protected.
Victoria also has a newer mental health law, the Mental Health and Wellbeing Act 2022. It says something simple but important: people with lived experience should be heard, and should help lead the way. We've always believed that — it's why we work the way we do.
What peer support actually is
Peer support is built on a simple, powerful idea: that being supported by someone who genuinely gets it changes what's possible.
A peer worker isn't there to fix you, or to hand down advice from above. They've lived through their own version of the hard stuff, and they bring that understanding into the relationship — alongside training, boundaries and skill. It's support that says I've been there too, and means it.
For many people, that changes everything. It softens the shame. It builds trust faster. It makes hope feel real — because it's standing right in front of you, in a person who came through the other side.
How we put this into practice
We don't just believe in lived experience. We employ it, and we invest in it.
Everyone who works with C in Coaching brings their own lived experience to the work. But lived experience on its own isn't enough, and we'd never pretend it is. A shared story and good intentions need to be held by real skill, clear boundaries and proper support — and that's the part too many services skip.
So every person on our team is supervised by our founder, Cristina Rojas, who teaches mental health and peer work at the tertiary level, after years in the sector and volunteering in emergency services. That supervision isn't a box-ticking exercise. It's how our workers keep growing, keep their practice safe and consistent, and keep showing up well for the people they support — on the heavy days and the ordinary ones.
It's the combination that matters: the warmth of someone who has been there, and the skill of someone who has been trained, supervised and supported to do this properly.
Walking alongside you
Recovery isn't a straight line, and no one should have to navigate it alone. As a registered NDIS provider, we walk alongside people living with mental health challenges across Victoria — online and in the community, in English or Spanish — at their own pace.
The system is changing. The law now says out loud what we have always believed: that your experience matters, that your voice belongs at the centre, and that the people best placed to walk with you are often the ones who understand from the inside.
That's the work. We're honoured to do it.