Q&A with Daniela Allison: leading with lived experience

For Mental Health Month, we sat down with Daniela Allison, General Manager for Sydney and the Central West at New Horizons. We chatted about the organisation’s approach to mental health, why lived experience matters, and how leadership in this space is evolving.

Daniela shares her personal journey from frontline support worker to senior leadership, and her vision for a more community-based, person-centred mental health system.

How would you describe New Horizons’ approach to mental health and wellbeing?

We’ve been delivering mental health services for a long time, and we do great work in the communities we serve. New Horizons has built strong relationships and is known in local communities as a trusted provider and mental health expert. I’ve seen firsthand the impact our services have on people’s lives.

I’m especially proud of the work we’re doing right now. We recently completed our mental health accreditation, and the auditor visited all the sites in my portfolio across Sydney. I got to hear feedback from both our teams and the people we support, and it was that we’re delivering exceptional services and our customers are having a really positive experience.

Pictured above, Daniela celebrates her 15th anniversary with New Horizons.

What does your role as GM for Sydney and the Central West involve?

I oversee all our service delivery teams in the Sydney basin, as well as Bathurst, Dubbo and Orange. We deliver a wide range of programs for different communities, including Supported Independent Living (SIL), outreach services through the NDIS, and aged care services like Home Care and CHSP in Bathurst.

We also run a day program there, and in Dubbo and Orange we deliver mental health group supports to inpatients at local hospitals, things like psychosocial support in a group setting.

I also look after:

● Community Living Supports (CLS) and CLSR for Refugees, which provide long-term recovery support and psychosocial support

● HASI Plus, which supports people transitioning back into the community after long hospital stays or incarceration

● Northern Sydney Supported Accommodation (NSSA), a transitional program helping people build tenancy skills and move into long-term housing

Each service is different, but all are centred around meeting people where they’re at and helping them build the life they want.

Wow, you’re busy! How did you come into a leadership role at New Horizons?

Honestly, I didn’t set out to be a leader. I started working at New Horizons in 2010 as a community support worker in a mental health program. I had never worked in mental health before. I have my own lived experience of mental ill-health and was worried the work might be triggering or that I wouldn’t be a good fit.

But once I started working in the HASI program, something changed. Many of the people I supported had no one else in their lives, they were long-term service users and had very little connection outside of the system. I went to a case conference once where all the clinical professionals were discussing a person, and that person wasn’t even invited.

That lit a fire in me that I’ve never been able to put out. It made me passionate about working in mental health and proving that having a mental health condition doesn’t mean you can’t live a meaningful, full life.

From there, opportunities opened up: I became a Customer Service Manager, then a Regional Manager, then moved into Operations and General Management roles. But I never set out to lead. I just wanted to work, especially because I’d been told for so long that I wouldn’t be able to.

What does “leadership” in mental health mean to you?

To me, it means showing people that anything is possible, not just for our customers, but for our teams, our peer workers, and our stakeholders. I always wear that lived experience hat proudly and use it to remind others that we can’t put limitations on people.

I refer to it as “living experience,” not just lived experience, because I’m still on that journey too. I often say, “Look at me. I’ve been where you are. And now I’m here.” Whether someone’s goal is to get out of bed each day or to get back to work, our role is to support them, whatever that looks like.

I also understand the barriers, like struggling with study or finding the right support, because I’ve been through them myself. But I truly believe, with the right support, anything is possible.

You’ve been at New Horizons for 15 years. How is New Horizons setting itself apart as a leader in the mental health space?

One of the things that makes New Horizons special is that many of our leaders have come from frontline roles. I’m not the only one who’s been here a long time. We have a deep understanding of what we do, and why it matters.

We also have a strong history of listening to what the community needs and shaping services around that. For example, in the Mid North Coast, we provide a specialist homelessness service. In South West Sydney, we implemented group supports because our customers told us they wanted more peer engagement, not just one-on-one sessions. They wanted to learn life skills together, feel less isolated, and connect with others. They didn’t want individual cooking lessons, they wanted to do it together. So, we made that happen through a group cooking program, and it’s been really successful.

Our teams also bring a wide variety of experiences, qualifications, and cultural knowledge. It’s not a cookie-cutter approach; everyone brings something different, which means we can support people from all walks of life.

What’s your vision for mental health support in Australia?

My vision is to see more community-based mental health support and less reliance on clinical inpatient models. I’ve seen and experienced the damage that can be done in overly medicalised settings and over-reliance on inpatient clinical interventions. I’ve also seen the incredible benefits of programs like HASI and CLS, not just for individuals but for their families and communities.

I’d love to see more in-community psychosocial support, more genuine integration of lived experience, and more peer-led work. And by that I don’t just mean having peer workers consulted, I mean having them really heard and giving peer workers real influence and space to lead. We’re starting to see some of that shift, but there’s still a long way to go.

Learn more about our leadership team at New Horizons, including Daniela:

View our Leadership team
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