Older adults can experience mental health care across multiple systems, including community mental health, primary care, hospitals and aged care. In Western Australia, these challenges are compounded by the state’s dispersed population and significant regional and remote communities, where access to specialist services and continuity of care can vary considerably. Yet the principles shaping services are still often developed by organisations rather than by the people who use them. Consumers of Mental Health WA (CoMHWA) partnered with older adults with lived experience to co-design an Older Adult Mental Health Philosophy of Care intended to influence how services understand, design and deliver mental health care for older people.

The project used a structured co-design process for consumers to identify what matters most when seeking mental health support, what can make services feel unsafe, inaccessible or disempowering, and what good care should look and feel like. The process sought to move beyond consultation by positioning lived experience as expertise and enabling participants to directly shape the final service-facing resource.

The presentation will examine the practical role a Philosophy of Care can play within models of care and service delivery. Rather than operating only as a statement of organisational values, a co-designed Philosophy of Care can provide a common reference point for service planning, workforce practice, consumer engagement, quality improvement and organisational reflection. For aged care and health service providers, it provides an opportunity to examine whether existing models of care align with what older people themselves say they need from mental health services.

Delegates will leave with an example of how co-design can translate lived experience into a service-level framework, practical insights for involving older consumers in service development, and considerations for embedding consumer-defined principles into everyday models of care and service delivery.