Hi valued carers,

This October has been one of those rare times (like once-in-four-years rare) where three big things align: the ACT election, Carers Week, and Mental Health Month. The ACT election saw the conclusion of Carers ACT’s ‘Stand with Carers’ campaign, where we advocated for major parties to support carers in their election commitments. We’re now looking forward to seeing these commitments materialise as the ACT welcomes the Labor government for another term.

Carers Week was an absolute blast, with several events across the organisation and beyond. We were particularly pleased to host a gratitude lunch for all the carers who have contributed to our policy and advocacy work over the past year. Your insights continue to be invaluable to us and we can’t thank you enough for everything you have shared with us.

For Mental Health Month, we organised a ‘Mental Health Priori-tea’ for Carers ACT staff, providing an opportunity to practice mindfulness and focus on gratitude. We were also very pleased to help organise a successful Mental Health Month Award event, where we celebrated some outstanding individuals working to improve the mental health system.

Left to right: Ben Drysdale, Jen Nixon, Nova Marimon, Dalanglin Dkhar, Catherine Vonarx, Ravi Krishnamurthy, Prudence Slaughter, Dalane Drexler, Yvonne Luxford, Felicity Maher, and Melanie Greenhalgh

One such individual was MHCV’s very own Catherine Vonarx, who received the Lived Experience Ally Recognition Award. Catherine’s dedication to her role as Mental Health Carers Policy & Advocacy Officer at Carers ACT truly shines through in her work. Catherine V always ensures that the voices and concerns of carers are heard while showing empathy towards the needs of consumers in everything she does. We’re very proud to have her on our team!

We’re equally proud of filmmaker and carer advocate Dalanglin (Dalang) Dkhar, who won the Mental Health Carers Award for her work on the film “Unconditional“, which was supported by Carers ACT. Well done to both Catherine and Dalang on their much deserved wins. You can read more about all the amazing winners here or watch the Win News segment using this link.

For more details on everything else that went on in the last month, please check out our ‘What we’ve been up to‘ section below. As always, your 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 on mhcarers@carersact.org.au.

All the best,

Catherine Joseph and Catherine Vonarx,

The Mental Health Carers Voice Team