One In Five for Sunday 29 November 2009

You know it's great who you meet up with while sipping a latte during a conference downtime. In this case a longtime operative in the Australian Mental health consumer networks. That's Leonie Manns, who when she discovered I was teeing up interviews with keynote speakers at the recent the MHS conference in Perth, said - 'you should be interviewing the most important people - the consumers'. Which led me immediately to invite Leonie Manns for a chat. So a day later, we're sitting outside doing coffee. It turns out Leonie Manns is on the management committee of the MHS - that's the Australasian Mental Health Services annual gathering. Leonie Manns says consumer involvement at this level is now usually a matter of course.