Mental Health Rights Manual
An online guide to help explain your legal and human rights in the mental health and human services systems in New South Wales.
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Words are important. The language we use and the stories we tell have great significance to all involved.
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Mental Health Coordinating Council holds annual CEO and Senior Managers Forum 2023.
From left, Nicole Wade, Women’s and Girls Emergency Centre, Amy Wyndham, Ministry of Health, MHCC’s Corinne Henderson, Stride CEO Drikus van der Merwe and guest speaker Michelle Blanchard, National Mental Health Commission presented to the Forum
Leading a mental health service is challenging. Bringing together CEOs and senior managers facing similar issues is a valuable way to explore shared concerns, exchange ideas and support one another.
Mental Health Coordinating Council brought a range of key leaders from the community-managed mental health sector together at our annual CEO and Senior Managers Forum on 25 May 2023.
The Forum explored some of the pressing challenges facing the sector, from growing demand for services and psychosocial disability in the NDIS, through to issues around stigma and ways to collaborate.
Leading the conversation were key figures from the mental health sector, including Dr Michelle Blanchard, Executive Director of Strategic Projects at the National Mental Health Commission who addressed the issue of stigma and discrimination and presented on the development of the National Stigma and Discrimination Reduction Strategy.
In a wide ranging panel discussion, featuring Amy Wyndham, Director Community Partnerships, Mental Health Branch, Ministry of Health, Ben McAlpine, Director Policy and Advocacy at NSW Council of Social Service, Nicole Wade, Deputy Chief Executive Officer, Women’s and Girls Emergency Centre and Drikus van der Merwe CEO, Stride the Forum discussed issues with a desire to find common ground and solutions.
In the panel discussion, Nicole Wade talked about how organisations often working with the same people, demonstrating the need for more cross sector work and opportunities to collaborate and advocate together.
NCOSS’s Ben McAlpine provided startling figures around workforce and funding facing the wider community sector, quoting figures that showed 64% of community organisations say the complexity of cases they deal with has increased. This is happening in an environment where most are finding it more difficult to attract staff and when only one in ten believes they are sufficiently funded to carry out their work.
Stride CEO Drikus van der Merwe spoke passionately about the need for the NDIS to stop trying to retrofit psychosocial disability into the parameters of other disabilities and the need for the Scheme to accept psychosocial as having its own, unique place in the NDIS.
MHCC holds CEO Forums as an opportunity for the community sector to raise its issues in a positive atmosphere with the emphasis on learning from each other, building capacity within the sector’s leadership and ultimately impacting reforms in mental health.
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