Topic Tuesday // Tools for Advocacy // Tues 19th October, 7:00-8:30PM AEST

[Daisydreamer]

Question 1. What is advocacy and what does effective advocacy look like?

Advocacy has its roots in the social justice movement, and is all about using your voice to communicate to others a particular goal, promote your self-determination, or to support a social movement.

For the purposes of this discussion, we will be using the term “advocacy” to describe many different approaches to advocacy including self, individual and systemic advocacy.

While advocacy might be informed by our past and experiences, it is often future focussed.

Over the years, advocacy has played a core role in ensuring the rights and dignity of people living with mental health concerns, and has shaped the services we have today.

[chibam]

@cloudcore @Former-Member @Daisydreamer 

@cloudcore wrote:

To start off, we would love to hear from you: What are you most interested in hearing about tonight?

---

Wow. Where do I begin?

Well I guess one thing that nags at me is that in a lot of the currant discussions, inquiries, conferances, ect. I see these days regarding mental health, I still notice that a vast, vast majority of the participants are people like therapists, or spokespeople of big organizations (e.g. headspace).

I find it really disheartening that there is such a small proportion of people like myself - just regular low-tier regular people who are the ones who have actually gone through the system and/or are in need of help.

So - when I have the oomph to speak out - I feel like there is an onus on me to speak not only for myself, but for the thousands of other sufferers who aren't present. But then, I feel wrong for doing that, because I can't tell other peoples' stories, I can only rightly speak for myself.

So I guess the essence of my dillemma is: how can we rouse much larger numbers of our community to speak out and shape the discussions? I realize that it is tough, it takes a lot of effort, and there is immense frustration in the seemingly minimal impact our efforts seem to make.

But I just can't see how things will ever improve unless we get the numbers speaking out to the people in charge.

[Eve7]

Bit early for those of us in the north stuck in standard time @Daisydreamer 

[Daisydreamer]

There are thousands of examples of effective lived experience advocacy movements across mental health services. Here are a few recent ones:

1. Recently the NDIS proposed to move to individual assessments for those applying NDIS. Lived experience advocates saw many of the challenges of this model, and through advocacy in consultations, this proposed change to legislation was denied.
   
   
2. Fifth National Mental Health Plan: Through strong advocacy of lived experience representatives, the inclusion of commitment to peer workforce and suicide prevention has brought forward new initiatives and will help to shape the future of the peer workforce.
   
   
3. Establishment of Primary Health Networks: Through advocacy, lived experience representatives highlighted that services needed to match local community needs that were not being met by National Services.  PHN’s partner with lived experience advocates to ensure that services meet local community needs
   
   

I am sure you can think of some in your local services, or at a state or national level! Would love to hear examples of effective advocacy you have seen

[Former-Member]

heya @Former-Member 

Topic Tuesday is where we get together with a guest and talk live about a topic. This week it is all about Advocacy. You are welcome to stay and engage in this topic but perhaps other topics might be best to navigate to the broader forums so that you can get the kinds of responses you may like and it doesn't get lost in the discussion. 🙂 

Thanks so much and take care 

- periwinklepixie 

[Anastasia]

Hello all, I'm excited to be here, it's a topic I am passionate about. Thank you @Daisydreamer @Former-Member @cloudcore  and all here

[cloudcore]

Welcome to the discussion @Eve7 @Anastasia  and @RedHorse  

[Former-Member]

Great examples @Daisydreamer !

I actually submitted myself as an annonymous case study for why independent assessments were a bad change to the NDIS. A lot of advocacy work I am happy to be loud and proud about but for this particular thing I wanted to be annonymous.

Just goes to show there are lots of different ways of doing advocacy! 

[Daisydreamer]

Hi @chibam 

I share your thoughts here, we still have a long way to go with ensuring there is more representation of lived experience and friends, family and carers at all levels of the mental health system. In the last 10 years, I have defintiely seen more people join the lived experience advocacy space and share their voice which gives me hope, but there is still more to be done. 

"how can we rouse much larger numbers of our community to speak out and shape the discussions?" This is such a great question, and I would be interested to hear your thoughts on this too. I think it starts with discussions like these, and empowering people to see the power of their voice and experience. For every person that is empowered to share their voice and advocate for their mental health, we start to build a stronger movement 🙂 

Finding my tribe and connecting with others in the advocacy space has really helped me stay motivated too. Are you connected with others in the advocacy space?

[Daisydreamer]

It is a bit early @Eve7