Young Stroke Service Project Consumer Consultants
Aphasia-friendly information (Word DOCX 2.6 MB)
Aphasia-friendly information (Adobe PDF 970 KB)
What is the project?
The Stroke Foundation is working with the Florey Institute of Neuroscience and Mental Health to build a new Australian health service. The service is for for young adults (age 18–45) who have had a stroke.
Doctors, therapists, and survivors of stroke will all work in the service. Treatments will be provided in person and online.
People with stroke who have trouble communicating or thinking will be helped to access the service.
We are looking for consumer consultants to help us with this project. The consumer consultants should be based in Victoria or South Australia.
What are consumer consultants?
Consumer consultants are people with lived experience of stroke who will be involved in the project.
They can be people with stroke or their family members or carers.
We want to include:
- People from diverse backgrounds, e.g. cultures, languages, genders, living situations and
- People with different experiences of stroke, e.g. having a recent stroke, difficulty moving, communicating, thinking, or seeing.
Ways to be involved
There are different ways for consultants to be involved in the project. You can be involved as much or as little as you want.
We need consultants with particular skills or experience. This could include understanding communication strategies for aphasia, or experience working with the media. Other project activities just need consultants who have been in hospital.
Involvement can range from:
- Consultation. For example, providing feedback on wording of patient surveys or the project website.
- Involvement. For example, discussion with the project team on how people with stroke use digital technology.
- Partner. Consultants and project team have equal say in project decisions. For example, developing an young stroke education program, writing a publication, lobbying for funding.
Consultants will help us from their own lived experience perspective. They will also need to think about different experiences of other survivors of stroke.
Support for consultants
Project staff will:
- Mentor consultants to help them complete activities.
- Brief consultants before and after meetings.
- Give consultants any extra support they need such as help to communicate.
- Connect consultants to support if they get upset thinking or talking about their stroke experiences.
You:
- Can bring a support person to meetings held in person or on Zoom.
- Will be compensated for your time with a digital Visa gift card or via invoice if you have an Australian Business Number (ABN).
- Will have parking and transport costs reimbursed.
Responsibilities
Project team members and consultants are expected to:
- Share clear, open, and respectful communication about project activities.
- Attend meetings and meet deadlines and tell us if you cannot come or make the deadline.
- Maintain confidentiality of discussions.
- Avoid using technical and medical language. Please let us know if you do not understand anything!
- Raise any concerns with the project team.
- Complete online training called Working well with stroke researchers.
Are you interested in being a consumer consultant?
Great! You need to complete an expression of interest form. You can complete the form online.
If you prefer, you can print the expression of interest form.
Fill it in and post it to: StrokeLine, 7/461 Bourke St, Melbourne 3000
Or you can call our friendly StrokeLine team on 1800 787 653. They will help you complete the form.
