As well as reading Croakey’s coverage of VICSERV’s #TowardsRecovery mental health conference, you can watch several interviews via the Periscope app with keynote speakers and other presenters and participants at the event in Melbourne last week.
They are all available at Croakey TV – or watch them below.
Keynote speaker Dr Simon Duffy at #TowardsRecovery
Dr Simon Duffy, founding director of The Centre for Welfare Reform in the UK, talks in this interview about his presentation on citizenship, choice, social equality. While warning strongly against the Big Society style welfare reforms that have stripped communities of support in the UK, his big challenge to the conference was the need to challenge the way the welfare state has created an “empire of services” that end up protecting their own interests and undermining the possibility of better solutions that should be forged in community. He also discusses how all eyes are on Australia’s National Disabilty Insurance Scheme (NDIS) but says there is a big difference between offering people with disability choice or control over their own lives. Read our story here.
US Professor Mark Salzer talks inclusion and participation
Professor Mark Salzer, Chair of the Department of Rehabilitation Sciences at Temple University in Pennsylvania talks in this interview with conference MC and former Radio National journalist Peter Mares about community inclusion and participation. He said people with mental health issues are still seen too often, including by clinicians and servicep providers, as patients, not people, and he called for advocates to fix the social barriers that get in the way of true participation just as much as any symptoms of mental illness. Read the Croakey story about his keynote.
Kim Koop and Lyn Morgain take stock at the conference
Conference organisers VICSERV CEO Kim Koop and cohealth CEO Lyn Morgain talk to Croakey on Day 1 at the #TowardsRecovery conference about the big challenges facing the mental health sector and some big ideas that emerged in the keynotes. Read the Croakey story about some of the challenges that emerged in conference sessions.
Harvey Baker-Dowdell talks about being a peer worker at #TowardsRecovery
MI Fellowship staffer Harvey Baker-Dowdell told the conference about his journey from participant to peer worker after co-presenting with his supervisor at a session that explored support for the emerging peer workforce.
Marion Blake from NZ’s Platform Trust on a community sector ‘transformation’
Platform Trust is a New Zealand collaboration of community organisations that are providing services to individuals, families and communities where mental health and addictions are an issue. Its CEO Marion Blake told Croakey that the group decided it had had enough of ‘business as usual’ approaches to complex health and social issues which didn’t resolve problems. “We decided to change course, lead from the front, find some partners and together transform the way the mental health and addiction system is working,” she told the conference.
Fiona Browning talks about the #TowardsRecovery Advocacy Tree
Fiona Browning from cohealth talks about the Advocacy Tree project initiated by mental health consumers involved in the North Western Melbourne Consumer Leadership Group. She said the group wanted to address a lack of advocacy and self advocacy supports and resources and to map what is needed in the mental health system for people seeking support. So they ‘planted’ the Advocacy Tree at the conference and asked delegates to contribute their thoughts on two key questions: ‘What do you wish you knew then that you do now?’ and ‘What would a consumer need to be able to advocate for themselves in the current climate?’ She gives Croakey a tour in this video.
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Marie McInerney is covering the #TowardsRecovery conference for the Croakey Conference News Service. Bookmark this link to track the coverage.
