Welcome to the Peer Work Project website

a collaborative initiative of Baptist Care (SA) and MIFSA

 

The Benefits of Peer Work

A Peer Worker is someone with a lived experience of mental illness, who is living well and is able to support others experiencing mental illness in facilitating their own recovery.

“If I had met a Peer Worker in the early days of my diagnosis, ten years of my life may not have been lost”.

(Comment made by ‘Introduction to Peer Work’ Course Participant, 2006)

Peers can be effective as they can offer a different degree of empathy, having experienced mental illness themselves and they offer hope. This website aims to inform Peer Workers and their Employers about the training and support we can provide.

 

 

We are very pleased to announce that the Peer Work Project has won a silver achievement award at the TheMHS conference.

TheMHS is The Mental Health Services Conference of Australia and New Zealand. TheMHS conference is an international mental health educational forum, attracting over 1000 mental health clinicians, managers, consumers, carers, researchers, educators and policy makers, annually. TheMHS is a learning network for improving mental health services in Australasia. The conference is being held in Adelaide this year and started 21 years ago in Adelaide.

 

We received the award for our contribution to the development of the peer workforce and contributing to mental health reform. It is a very inspiring and energising conference and I think it is an honour to be recognised and acknowledged by the TheMHS committee for our efforts in Peer Work.


SANE Australia Survey: Parenting and mental illness – have your say…

A new SANE Australia study is investigating the challenges of being a parent of a school-age child, when you have a mental illness.

Produced in consultation with Children of Parents with a Metal Illness (COPMI), the online survey investigates parents’ concerns and seeks ideas for how services can be improved.

Results from this confidential study will be published in a special SANE Research Bulletin later this year, to lobby for improved understanding and support for families where a parent is living with a mental illness.

Visit www.sane.org to access the survey and let us know about your experience.

 

The SANE Helpline – 1800 18 SANE (7263) – is available if you want to discuss any issues raised by the survey.

 

 

THE HON MARK BUTLER MP

Minister for Mental Health and Ageing

Minister Assisting the Prime Minister on Mental Health Reform
MEDIA RELEASE

7 December 2011

VOICE FOR CONSUMERS IN MENTAL HEALTH REFORM

The establishment of a new national mental health consumer organisation has moved a step closer, with the Gillard Government focused firmly on ensuring it will be driven by consumers, for consumers.

Minister for Mental Health and Ageing, Mark Butler,  today announced the establishment of a new Consumer Reference Group which will assist in setting the directions of the new organisation and setting up mechanisms to involve consumers from the beginning.

The Group will be appointed following a national call for Expressions of Interest in early January 2012.

The Government has already announced that the new mental health consumer organisation will operate under an auspice arrangement to ensure it is established as quickly as possible, and has the best possible chance of sustainable impact and success over the longer term.

“I want this new consumer organisation engaged in national mental health reform as soon as is feasibly possible. It will bring a strong and consolidated consumer voice which will contribute to more responsive and accountable mental health policy and program directions,” Mr Butler said.

“It is important for the new consumer organisation to be established, operational, and engaging with its constituents so it is working in pace with mental health reform activities.”

The new consumer organisation will work closely with Australia’s first National Mental Health Commission, also announced in the Budget.

Mr Butler also released the Final Report of the Scoping Study, Establishment of a New Peak National Mental Health Consumer Organisation (March 2010).

This report informs options for establishing a new mental health consumer organisation and provides a number of key recommendations including:

  • that the core purpose of the new organisation will be ‘to bring together a diversity of mental health consumers and mental health consumer organisations and groups enabling them to work collaboratively towards achieving a shared national vision leading to improved quality of life, social justice and inclusion’; and
  • that the organisation should be representative of, and accountable to, mental health consumers Australia-wide.

The Government released a detailed response to the scoping study today.

“I look forward to working with the mental health consumer sector towards our shared vision for improved health and quality of life, social justice and inclusion outcomes for people with mental illness,” Mr Butler said.

Further information about the national call for Expressions of Interest will be available in January at: www.health.gov.au/mentalhealth

The Final Report of the Scoping Study and the Government’s response is available at: http://www.health.gov.au/internet/main/publishing.nsf/Content/mental-consume

Media contact: Virginia Kim,  0407 415 484

 

 

 

Shout it from the rooftops!

We are good, strong and knowing,
Maybe mad, but not bad.

To sail on the crest of the wave,
Fall to the trough in the sea…

To hear the unheard words,
To think the unknown thoughts…

Yet set ourselves free!

Are you listening…
Do you hear us?

Hope … is our
Every morning star.

Geoff Arcus

 


 

The task is not to become normal.

The task is to take up your journey of recovery

and to become who you are called to be!

Patricia E. Deegan


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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