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This is a new section to our twice yearly e-newsletter. We realise that while many of you reading this do work with some members of our team, many of you don’t know who we are!

We would like to be a little more personal and share some information about each of our team members in our e-newsletters.

First up is our beloved Shehani De Silva.

Name: Shehani De Silva             

Job title: Education & Service Development Consultant

Qualifications: Bachelors (Honours) in Psychology

Time at VTMH: completing 9 years in 2022

Tell us your work story: Prior to migration I worked in the mental health sector in Sri Lanka. Amongst others, this included working with UNICEF Colombo psychosocial program which was aimed at working with mental health issues of communities affected by the civil conflict. After migrating to New Zealand, I had the opportunity to work with a community based mental health service and also as a as a counsellor/advocate with Wellington refugees at Survivors Trust; a leading mental health and wellbeing service for people from refugee backgrounds living in Aotearoa.

What were you doing professionally prior to working at VTMH? I coordinated the transcultural mental health program at Action with Disability within ethnic communities (ADEC) an advocacy based organisation set up to support culturally diverse people with disability and their carers.

What attracted you to this role at VTMH? During my time at ADEC, I worked closely with VTMH (at the time known as VTPU) on many projects in relation to diversity. Whilst partnering with different consultants on different projects  at VTMH,  I also got to know each of them very well. I was always taken by the quality of work at VTMH and the nuanced and careful thought put into each project. When a position became vacant, I didn’t think twice.

Proudest achievement/s while working at VTMH: There are many, but what stands out most is working with carers from culturally diverse backgrounds to support them to share their carer stories and help bring them to life in the form of videos. What stood out most in this project was the fact that we were able to produce a resource in the carers “language.” The project was selected as a finalist for Victoria’s Public Healthcare Awards.

What do you hope for and envision for the future of VTMH? To continue to be the leading transcultural mental health service in the state.

What do you enjoy most about your role? What I enjoy most is the collaborative work undertaken with diverse groups of people, including organisations and community members. I also enjoy the ability to be creative in this role.

What do you like to do in your free time? I like to watch Netflix and chat with my mother and daughter. At present however all my time is taken up with being across the political, social and economic issues affecting  Sri Lanka.

What’s the last book you read? Australia Day by Stan Grant

What’s the first concert you ever attended? Bon Jovi

What’s the next place on your travel bucket list? Travelling around Australia

Tell us something we might be surprised to hear about you? I am a fan of the TikTok app!

VTMH was pleased to hold the Inaugural Daryl Oehm Oration, on the evening of Wednesday, 18 May 2022.

Inaugural Oration speaker, Azmeena Hussain OAM, spoke to the theme of the evening, Struggles of marginalised identities and their precarious existence, by weaving together her personal and professional experiences in the field of law, to link advocacy, cultural responsiveness, organisation reforms, mental health service provision, legal supports and lived experience in the one narrative.

We were also grateful to Mitch Tambo, Australian world music star and proud Gimilaraay man, who provided a number of musical performances, and to our MC for the night, Dr. Rasha Rahman.

Collectively they ensured the evening was one that resonated with the work of VTMH, and thoughtfully recognized the contributions to transcultural mental health in Victoria by the late Daryl Oehm (VTMH Manager, 2008-2018).

Thank you to all that joined the event on the evening. We hope this will be an event we can continue to offer to the sector in future.

Spiritual Health Association (SHA) in partnership with Victorian Transcultural Mental Health (VTMH) has been running The Spirituality & Diversity Discussion Project since 2019. As part of this project, reflective peer group sessions have been facilitated for mental health practitioners to integrate spiritual themes into their practices.  

Over the past few months, 3 sessions were held with the specific topics:

• Psychiatry and spirituality: Why are they such uncomfortable bedfellows?
• Mental Health Recovery: Where is the healing, humility, and hope?
• A crisis of meaning: Spiritual emergence or spiritual emergency?     

These sessions were fully booked out and participants were very appreciative to have a space to discuss the important role of spirituality in mental health.

Another session is scheduled for Tuesday, 9 August 2022 with the topic: ‘Prayer, meditation, or medication: What’s your preference?’                           

This session is now fully booked but please do keep an eye out on our website for booking details for future sessions.

The Department of Health (DoH) is developing an integrated treatment, care and support program for clients with co-occurring needs: Guidance for Victorian mental health and wellbeing and Alcohol and Other Drugs (AOD) services.  

In doing this, the DoH’s Mental Health and Wellbeing Division sought expertise from across the mental health, wellbeing and AOD sectors, including people with diverse lived and living experiences.

VTMH was pleased to participate in these three workshops, which assisted in identifying key themes, and enablers to support the delivery of integrated treatment, care and support across communities. 

The draft Guidance sets out a vision for integrated treatment, care and support that will meet the expectations of people with co-occurring needs, and those of their families and supporters. The DoH and sector peaks believe this is only the first step in the journey to transform our ways of working across, and within, the mental health and wellbeing and AOD systems.

The department aims to share final Guidance via a full day workshop “Working better together: A shared vision for AOD and Mental Health” in July, 2022. VTMH Education and Service Development Consultant Abie Jazi will represent the Team at this event.

The Department of Health (DoH), Diverse Communities’ Team, in response to its ongoing alliance with VTMH, invited VTMH to participate in a number of events.

VTMH was invited to present at the DoH monthly lunch and learn seminar (organised by the Diverse Communities’ Team) on our experience of engaging with communities. The session was attended by about 40 persons from a variety of divisions within the DoH. These included public servants within the Mental Health & Wellbeing Division from Policy Officers to Directors.

VTMH was also invited to a roundtable which focused on the Diverse Communities Team’s engagement approach for the development of the Framework and Blueprint for Action. The Roundtable focused on the who, how, when and where the team should engage with community members and the sector. This session was attended by many key stakeholders.

VTMH has since been invited to participate in the Diverse Communities’ Mental Health & Wellbeing Working Group. This group has been established in line with the recommendations of the Royal Commission into Victoria’s Mental Health System, to ‘provide expert advice and guidance on the development of a diverse communities’ mental health and wellbeing framework and a blueprint for action’ (chapter 21.6.2, page 261, volume 3).

On Friday, 13 May 2022 a workshop was held via Zoom to inform design of the new mental health and wellbeing outcomes and performance framework. 

This workshop was one of a series of workshops facilitated by Today Design for stakeholders across the mental health and wellbeing sector. The first workshops with consumers and carers have been held. Insights from consumer and carer workshops will guide discussion and activities in these sector workshops. 

Naomi Chapman from VTMH was invited to the session in May to contribute key themes and priorities to develop a shared vision for the future of mental health and wellbeing in Victoria. 

These themes included an understanding of intersectionality (where people are accepted into a mental health service in their entirety; they don’t have to pick or suppress various aspects of their identity), and how to hold hope for people with a lived experience of mental distress.

On Monday, 6 December 2021 a small but committed group of people met to kick off VTMH’s Lived Experience Community of Practice (LE CoP). We discussed how to create a culturally safe space and identified our top three values – collaboration, diversity and advocacy.

Our second meeting on Thursday, 7 April 2022 focused on a presentation given by VTMH’s Consumer Consultant, Naomi Chapman, entitled “Dare to Care – Compassion in the Workplace.”

The overarching group objectives include:

• How lived experience practitioners with diverse voices influence practice within their organisations and the mental health sector.

• Systemic barriers and enablers that face lived experience practitioners from diverse backgrounds when trying to contribute or generate change. This will also become a relevant source of knowledge for the Department of Health (DoH).

The LE CoP group members represent various voices within the mental health system including those from culturally and linguistically diverse (CaLD) communities, those with experiences of migration, youth, and the LGBTIQA+ communities.

Our next meeting was held via Teams on Thursday, 9 June. It was facilitated by Kath Currey, Lived Experience Coordinator at NEAMI, and the topic was “Exploring diverse backgrounds and experiences in Lived Experience practice (the different ways in which we utilise a lived experience of diversity in our roles).”

Facilitators from VTMH are Naomi Chapman and Abie Jazi.

VTMH was invited to collaborate with Darebin Council and Your Community Health (YCH) to co-design a project with community members from East Preston and Reservoir. The goals of the project were to develop a neighbourhood program that strengthens emotional and social well-being of the two communities.

VTMH’s involvement in this tri-partnership program was two fold: a) to develop a framework with the Community Advisory group members for the training and b) to deliver the training to community volunteers. This phase of the project has been completed as of June 2022. The project is now primarily led by YCH.

VTMH has been in partnership with Star Health since 2020.

Over the last 2 years, VTMH has assisted Star Health to employ numerous strategies to support their cultural responsiveness practices and meet their identified goals to embed these measures. Some of these are: 

• Workforce capacity building including workshops and reflective conversations;
• Provision of resources;
• Refinement of Star Health assessment tools;
• Mentorship of their project leads (Anna Browne and Dominic Hwang).

For the final year of the partnership (2022-2023) we are planning to deliver a ‘Train the Trainer’ program for Star Health. It is hoped this will help towards a successful and sustainable model for implementation of cultural responsiveness across the organisation.

Recommendation 31 of the recent Royal Commission into Victoria’s mental health services outlined the establishment of eight family and carer-led centres across the state, to better respond to the needs of those caring and supporting family and friends up against mental health challenges.

Tandem, Victoria’s peak body representing family and friends supporting people living with mental health issues, was tasked with facilitating a co-design process to develop tender specifications to guide those services or organisations wishing to tender to run one or all eight centers.

VTMH was grateful for the opportunity to join the “Co-design Governance Group” to contribute to this process that considered the needs of all carers across the breadth of Victoria’s richly diverse communities. We were also grateful to work alongside group members who ensured a depth of knowledge and experience informed this important design phase.

VTMH is excited to see Tandem’s final tender design and watch as the process progresses towards establishing the eight operational family and carer-led centers across the state.