Consumer Engagement and Community Consultation

Facilitating community consultation and engagement takes a certain skillset.

It also takes a certain personality, approach and needs somebody with certain life experiences. Peta is very fortunate to have developed these skills and expertise over the past 25 years as a theatre practioner, teacher, community educator and health consumer engagement specialist.

She can assist your organisation or service to conduct consumer engagement activities or focus groups, community consultation and forums or provide training to your staff to assist them to develop engagement and collaboration skills.

Services that Peta can provide:

Facilitation

Peta can work with you to facilitate focus groups, forums or community consultation sessions to engage with local communities, patients, carers and lived experience groups.

Consulting

With her experience in consumer engagement, community consultation and lived experience, Peta can help you with grant writing, project development and the implementation of evaluation strategies.

Training

Do your staff need some training on how to best communicate to and work with patients, consumers, carers or certain community stakeholders? Peta can tailor training to meet the needs of your research project, policy development or service implementation/delivery.

Some examples of Peta’s consumer and community engagement work here:

Co-author of “Hearing it from You - Engaging rural, remote and very remote community members in frailty research”: https://www.afn.org.au/rual-and-remote-communities/
Co-author of “Australian Consensus Statements - Prevention and management of frailty among community dwelling older adults”: https://www.afn.org.au/national-consensus-statements/
Facilitating professional development for researchers and clinicians: https://www.afn.org.au/frailty-nexus/getting-started-with-involving-consumers-in-frailty-research/
Collaborating with Mental Health First Aid for their 21st birthday celebrations: https://www.mhfa.com.au/article/celebrating-21-years-of-mhfa-mhfaider-network-event
Talking about Vaping ANZMHA Podcast (2023): https://anzmh.asn.au/blog/s5-e42-peta-dampney
“How to be an Advocate” webinar: https://www.afn.org.au/past-events/how-to-be-an-advocate/
Keynote Presenter at 2024 Stop Domestic Violence Conference: https://anzmh.asn.au/hubfs/SDVC/2024/SDV24%20Conference%20Handbook_DIGITAL.pdf

“Peta has been a representative (a Gidget Angel) for the Gidget Foundation since 2018. She is able to combine her own insights from her lived experience with her professional knowledge and experience in a way that makes people listen. Peta is great at building up relationships in the sector and welcoming new individuals into the space. Peta is such an inspiration and a lovely human as well - can't recommend her more highly!”