You can read the latest issue of the Mental Health Carers Voice February 2024 Update

MHCV Team Update

Hi valued carers,

What a whirlwind February has been! It’s been a month of advocacy, outreach, and learning. We’ve done a few things of note over the month, including:

• Participation in the Prevention, Reduction, and Elimination of Restrictive Practices Steering Committee, ensuring that the unique perspectives of carers were given due consideration in this evolving space.
• Involvement in the Reference group for mental health in multicultural communities, highlighting the unique challenges and nuances faced by mental health carers within culturally and linguistically diverse communities.
• Engagement in the NOUS group evaluation of the Discharge Accommodation Program (DAP), where the experiences and insights shared by carers were instrumental in identifying good practices, opportunities, and gaps in community-based mental health crisis support services in the ACT.
• Continued collaboration to design the expansions of Safe Haven and Head to Health, with a focus on improved Emergency Department diversion and co-located/integrated models to make navigation easier for carers.
• Outreach to Tuggeranong Mental Health, MH Link, and City Mental Health Teams to ensure that clinicians interacting with carers out in the community can provide the necessary identification and support.
• Attendance and contribution at a workshop on unmet need for psychosocial support in the ACT, emphasising the demand for psychosocial supports for carers as a key area requiring attention.

We’re also pleased to share that our collaboration with TheMHS is going strong as we continue planning the Carer Forum for the theMHS 2024 Conference in August. We hope to make the forum both informative and engaging (which of course it will be…we’re hosting!) We’ll be sharing more details over the next few months, so stay tuned.

Don’t forget to mark your calendars for our next Carer Collective meeting on the 20th of March. This session will delve into the proposed changes in the NDIS review concerning psychosocial disability, which refers to disability arising from mental health conditions. It’s a great chance for you to come along, learn, and contribute your ideas. We’ll be using this to advocate for a psychosocial system that works for you and the people you care for. You can read more about the Carer Collective below.

As always, our voice is vital to the work we do and if you have anything you wish to share please feel free to contact us via email mhcarers@carersact.org.au.

All the best,

Catherine Joseph and Catherine Vonarx,

The Mental Health Carers Voice Team