Co-production has long been recognised as a foundational principle in mental health service design. What has changed is not the concept itself, but the context in which services are now expected to operate. Mental health systems are increasingly characterised by joint commissioning, national service models delivered through local contexts, heightened expectations of cultural safety and lived experience leadership, and sustained pressure on workforce capacity and system integration.

In this environment, co-production can no longer be understood solely as a values-based or participatory approach. It has become a critical system capability, essential to implementation, sustainability and trust.

This keynote draws on our practical experience establishing and operating Medicare Mental Health Centres (MMHCs) across a range of regional and metropolitan settings, including Lismore, Coffs Harbour, Kempsey, Ipswich, Kingaroy and the Gold Coast. While MMHCs are underpinned by a nationally consistent service model, their effectiveness has been shaped by the extent to which localisation has been achieved through genuine co-production with commissioning bodies, delivery partners, communities and people with lived experience.

Central to this work includes drawing on the shared regional plans aligning Primary Health Networks, Hospital and Health Services, community organisations and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander partners around common priorities, pathways and outcomes. Co-production has also been embedded beyond establishment, functioning as an ongoing operating discipline through governance, workforce design, service adaptation and continuous improvement.

The keynote will reflect on the shift from one-off co-design to ongoing production, and the implications this has for service resilience, system integration and reform readiness. It will argue that contemporary mental health reform depends not on whether co-production occurs, but on whether it is sufficiently mature, embedded and sustained to carry the scale and complexity of change now required.

Three Key Learnings:
1. Acknowledging the role of co-production in the modern mental health sector.
2. How to develop co-production in practice.
3. How to develop co-production as part of collaborative, interagency relationships.