Event Category: Seminar

SPEAKERS

Helen Makregiorgos, Civil Justice Program, Victoria Legal Aid

Simona, Lived Experience Expert, Victoria Legal Aid

Topic

IMHA is a free state-wide non legal advocacy service for people at risk of or subject to compulsory treatment in Victoria. The Royal Commission into Victoria’s Mental Health System recommended that non legal advocacy services should be available to all consumers who want it and hence the need for a opt out system.

IMHA has been working with culturally and linguistically diverse communities for the past 7 years and identified that these communities are often not able to access culturally safe mental health services. The Royal Commission recommendation will provide opportunity for people from these communities to access non legal advocacy services that can support them to understand and enact their rights, including their rights to mental health services that are culturally safe and responsive.

About the speakers

Helen currently manages non legal advocacy services at Victoria Legal Aid including IMHA. Helen established and currently manages IMHA and IFAS. Helen is a social worker who has worked in a range of sectors including homelessness, health, women’s health, sexual assault, family violence and mental health. Helen is passionate about social justice, human rights, culturally safe practices, and codesign and coproduction. Helen has completed a Masters in research with a focus on maternal mental health and referral pathways. She has also published work in the areas of non-legal advocacy in mental health and maternal mental health and family violence.

Simona is passionate about consumer-focused and trauma-informed health care. She is a member of the Independent Mental Health Advocacy’s Speaking from Experience group. Her advocacy journey commenced in 2010 at the Consumer Leadership Conference run by Our Consumer Place. Between 2011-2012 she was a Consumer and Carer Advisory Group member at the Royal Melbourne Hospital. Simona has been a peer support worker, holds a Bachelor of Psychological Science, and has volunteered in a range of community settings for over two decades. She enjoys hiking, playing guitar and writing poetry.

Eligibility

VTMH seminars are open to individuals, from all disciplines and working in all sectors, who are based in Australia and interested in diversity and mental health.  

Please note, Trybooking is no longer supported by Internet Explorer so you will have to use another web browser such as Google Chrome, in order to make your booking.

SPEAKERS

Dr. Trini Abascal – Co-founder and Director of Latin Stories Australia and Research and Evaluation Coordinator at Family Life

Rafaela Lopez OAM – Anthropologist and Historian

Cristy Abela – Co-founder and Board Director of Latin Stories Australia and Senior Policy Adviser at Essential Services Commission

Topic

The “Nuestras Voces” project is an initiative of Latin Stories Australia and was funded by the Victorian Government with the aim of increasing understanding of the migrant and refugee experiences, through the eyes of the Spanish-speaking communities’ members who arrived in Melbourne between the 1960s and 1980s.

This project is centred on social harmony and connection. It explores migrant and refugee settlement themes such as: settlement challenges, the refugee voice, multiculturalism and the transformational experience of education and opportunities for migrants and the experiences of the seniors.

One of the deliverables of the project was a documentary film which is a powerful reflection on the strength and resilience of migrants.

About the speakers

Dr. Trini Abascal – Trini is one of the Co-founders and Directors of Latin Stories Australia and a Research and Evaluation Coordinator at Family Life. Trini is passionate about inclusion and social justice which is reflected in her work and the projects she develops and delivers, as part of Latin Stories Australia. She has over six years’ experience managing community projects; eight years’ experience conducting research activities and over two years’ experience undertaking evaluation on community-based projects across a diverse range of population groups.

Rafaela Lopez OAM – Rafaela is an anthropologist and historian who has a diverse professional background, having worked in social research and community services for close to four decades. This includes Migrant and Refugee settlement, Disability Support, Aged Care Services, Community Housing, Women’s Health Programs and Domestic Violence Services.

She has published many articles, particularly in relation to immigrant issues including issues for Hispanics living in Australia. In the early 1980s, whilst part of the Executive Committee of the Spanish Latin American Welfare Centre (CELAS now UNITED), Rafaela was part of a group of Spanish, Latin Americans, and Australians who responded to the needs of highly traumatised recently arrived refugees, whose countries were under right-wing dictatorship (Chile, Uruguay and Argentina) or undergoing a Civil War (El Salvador) and established the Foundation for Survivors of Torture and Trauma. Now known simply as Foundation House and now working with Australians of all backgrounds.

Rafaela’s community contribution has been recognised, with a number of awards, by the Federal as well as the Victorian Governments including the Medal of the Order of Australia (OAM) for her ‘long-term contribution to the Victorian Community’.

Cristy Abela is a senior Policy Adviser at the Essential Services Commission, which is the economic independent regulator of water, electricity and transport of the Victorian Government. Cristy is working on the State’s Water Price Review. She came to Melbourne in 2011 to study her Masters of Environment at Melbourne University. She loves the Mornington Peninsula and watching Australian sunsets. She is the Director of the board and co-founder of Latin Stories Australia. 

Eligibility

VTMH seminars are open to individuals, from all disciplines and working in all sectors, who are based in Australia and interested in diversity and mental health.  

Please note, Trybooking is no longer supported by Internet Explorer so you will have to use another web browser such as Google Chrome, in order to make your booking.

Spiritual Health Lived Experience Advisory Committee (SHLEAC) in collaboration with Spiritual Health Association.

SPEAKERS

Evan Bichara – Mental Health Advocate, Community Educator, Researcher & Publisher of ‘Strengths Model of Case Management’ and Multicultural Advisor

Hannah Friebel – Consumer Consultant, Adjunct Research Associate, Project Lead, Higher Education Student, Artist and Documentary Film Maker

Maria Dimopoulos – Artist, Museum Curator and Lived Experience Consultant

Kevin Treloar – Peer Cadet, Student and Volunteer Buddhist Spiritual Care Practitioner

Jenny Greenham – Mental Health Leader, Spiritual Health Association

Topic

This presentation will introduce participants to the work SHELAC is undertaking to advance mental health reform to reflect holistic person-centred care.

We will review our understanding of spirituality in the contemporary context and how it supports personal recovery.

Four expert lived experience panellists will share how their connection to their spirituality has supported and enhanced their mental health, wellbeing and recovery. They will outline their vision for compassionate person-centred mental health care that considers the spiritual domain of human expression and brings us another step closer to realising the biopsychosocial-spiritual model of holistic care.

About the speakers

Evan Bichara has been working as a mental health advocate for forty years around Australia in various roles including researcher, educator, lived experience narrator and peer support worker. He is well known to VTMH through his many years collaborating in the multi-cultural mental health space. Evan has worked tirelessly to engage, encourage, and empower people.

Hannah Friebel identifies as a Neurodivergent ‘Survivor’ of the mental health system, currently working as a Consumer Consultant at Monash Health. Hannah seeks to advance the future of consumer leadership and person-centred care and is trained to post-graduate level in Spiritual Care (with Clinical Pastoral Education placement in the public mental health system).

Maria Dimopoulous is a Greek-Australian writer and visual artist, born in Melbourne who began her lived experience advocacy work in 2004. She has studied Fine Arts, Museum curatorship and is currently completing a Certificate IV in Mental Health at Swinburne University. Maria is passionate about the place of spirituality in healthcare.

Kevin Treloar has been a Buddhist practitioner of 20 years and this led him to become a Spiritual Care Practitioner and recently a Peer Worker Cadet with EACH. His spiritual learnings have shown him that to maintain well-being he must live in harmony with the truth of what it means to be a sentient being.

Jenny Greenham feels privileged to work at the very fertile intersection of mental health and spiritual care, two areas of life that benefit from a steady focus to effect inner harmony and wellbeing. In her role as Mental Health Leader at Spiritual Health Association she explores this phenomenon from diverse vantage points, with different stakeholders to influence health policy for whole person outcomes.

Eligibility

VTMH seminars are open to individuals, from all disciplines and working in all sectors, who are based in Australia and interested in diversity and mental health.  

Please note, Trybooking is no longer supported by Internet Explorer so you will have to use another web browser such as Google Chrome, in order to make your booking.

SPEAKERS

Jasmine Phillips and Dawt Tha Sung Thang Eng, Cohealth 

Topic

This presentation will share Cohealth’s community engagement framework for community-led practice with bicultural workers. The framework will be explored through the lens of a mental health prevention program, co-design and delivered by 3 bicultural workers, working with their communities in the West of Melbourne.

About the speakers

Jasmine Phillips

Jasmine is a community development practitioner. She has managed the bicultural program at Cohealth since its inception; a program that aims to increase opportunities for people from refugee backgrounds to lead the design and delivery of community-led projects as bicultural workers. The program provides bicultural workers with capacity building, networking, employment and supervision and seeks to increase sector capacity to employ bicultural workers and build culturally safe work places that are inclusive and facilitate self-determination.

Dawt Tha Sung Thang Eng 

Born in Chin State of Burma, Dawt Tha arrived in Australia in 2010. She obtained a Bachelor of Nursing Degree in 2020 and has worked as a bicultural worker since 2018.  

Dawt Tha is passionate about supporting her communities’ health and wellbeing and has been working collaboratively with her community to deliver projects that meet their needs and priorities.

Eligibility

VTMH seminars are open to individuals, from all disciplines and working in all sectors, who are based in Australia and interested in diversity and mental health.  

SPEAKERS

Jenny Greenham, Mental Health Leader, Spiritual Health Association
Justin Kuay, Consultant Psychiatrist, Victorian Transcultural Mental Health

Topic

Spiritual Health Association and Victorian Transcultural Mental Health have collaborated since 2017 to present a suite of learning opportunities for mental health workers. The objective is to explore spirituality and diversity and how workers might engage with people for spiritual care outcomes. The collaboration draws upon diverse skill sets which support 90-minute themed small group reflective conversation.

Into its fourth year the project continues to engage a range of clinical, community and peer workforce personnel. Participating professionals are supported to nominate and explore the challenges they experience when addressing the spiritual dimension of human expression and need in what has traditionally been a hostile medical model environment.

The presentation will review the evolution of this reflective practice model, share learnings and evaluation data gathered over three years facilitating Spirituality and Diversity Discussions.

About the speakers

Jenny feels privileged to work at the very fertile intersection of mental health and spiritual care, two areas of life that benefit from a steady focus to effect inner harmony and wellbeing. In her role as Mental Health Leader at Spiritual Health, she explores this phenomenon from diverse vantage points, bringing together different stakeholders in the ever-present challenge to influence health policy to reflect genuine holistic person-centred care.

Justin Kuay, Consultant psychiatrist, VTMH

Justin is an experienced, general adult psychiatrist and psychotherapist who enjoys working in education and service development. He recognises the importance of acknowledging spiritual beliefs and their role in aiding recovery from mental health issues.

Eligibility

VTMH seminars are open to individuals, from all disciplines and working in all sectors, who are based in Australia and interested in diversity and mental health.  

SPEAKER

Feifei Liao, Co-founder and Managing Director at Story is Connection; Project Officer at Whittlesea International Student Wellbeing Hub; Mental Health Speaker at Batyr; Contemporary dancer; Founder of Feifei Curiosity; and Recovery Educator at Discovery College

Topic

The session will provide an overview of innovative ways of leveraging storytelling, arts and lived experience to explore mental health challenges multicultural communities face and support them to navigate their own journey for prevention and recovery. Feifei will share her lived experience in mental health, unpack some stories of international students dealing with mental health, and reflect on some gaps between mental health service providers and the students. The session will briefly showcase some creative projects co-designed with multicultural communities who have lived experience in mental health and artists that achieved to improve our understanding of specific challenges they have and paved accessible therapeutic pathways. Some artistic practices involved include theatre, film, dance, poetry and storytelling meditation.

About the speaker

Feifei Liao is the co-founder and managing director of the Not-for-Profit Organisation ‘Story is Connection,’ focusing on amplifying the authentic voice of international students and building their capacity through theatre and film productions. As the project officer of the Whittlesea International Student Wellbeing Hub at the City of Whittlesea, she has been co-designing with international students to deliver various activities to support their wellbeing during the pandemic. She is a speaker from Batyr, sharing her lived experience of mental health with young people.

She has worked for multicultural communities for more than a decade across universities, not-for-profit organisations, local councils and the state government. She is passionate about inspiring individuals to live life fully through intersectional, strength-based, co-design and grassroots approaches.

Eligibility

VTMH seminars are open to individuals, from all disciplines and working in all sectors, who are based in Australia and interested in diversity and mental health.  

SPEAKER

Professor Rebecca Wickes, Director Monash Migration and Inclusion Centre, School of Social Sciences, Monash University

Topic

This discussion will provide an overview of the key findings from the landmark  Migrant and Refugee Women Safety and Security Study. This national study was undertaken by Harmony Alliance: Migrant and Refugee Women for Change (a national women’s alliance) and Monash University. The session will discuss the survey design and implementation and describe women’s self-reported experiences of crime, trust in and attitudes towards institutions including police, as well as broader financial security. It will conclude with some reflections on the challenges and benefits of undertaking a survey such as this and on the important partnerships needed to continue this work in the future.

About the speaker

Rebecca Wickes is Professor in Criminology and the Director for the Monash Migration and Inclusion Centre  at the School of Social Sciences, Monash University. She is the lead investigator of the Australian Community Capacity Study, a multi-million, multisite, longitudinal study of place. Dr Wickes’ research focuses on physical and demographic changes in urban communities and their influence on social relationships, inclusion and the concentration of social problems, in particular crime, social exclusion and public disorder.

Eligibility

VTMH seminars are open to individuals, from all disciplines and working in all sectors, who are based in Australia and interested in diversity and mental health.  

SPEAKER

Professor Naomi Priest, Centre for Social Research and Methods, Australian National University

Topic

Racism is a key driver of ill-health and health inequalities. Children and young people are particularly vulnerable to racism’s harms. A recent report published by VicHealth focuses on data collected in Australia over the last five years and underscores the high prevalence of racial discrimination experienced by children and young people from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander backgrounds, and from some ethnic minoritised groups. This report highlights six key processes and approaches to addressing racism as a social determinant of health and mitigating the harm it has on the lives of children and young people. These include naming racism at a systemic and institutional level; working with community groups, children and young people; and increased evaluation and monitoring of actions and interventions.

The report is available for download from VicHealth  

About the speaker

Professor Naomi Priest is a life course and social epidemiologist. Naomi is Group Leader of Social-Biological Research at the Centre for Social Research and Methods, Australian National University and an Honorary Fellow in the Centre for Community Child Health, Murdoch Children’s Research Institute, Royal Children’s Hospital.

Her research program focuses on examining how social forces and social exposures become biologically embedded and embodied, and understanding and addressing inequalities in health and development, throughout the life course. Much of this work explores social determinants of health and health inequalities in mental health and cardiovascular disease for children and adolescents.

She is particularly interested in understanding and addressing racism as a fundamental cause of health and health inequalities.

Eligibility

VTMH seminars are open to individuals, from all disciplines and working in all sectors, who are based in Australia and interested in diversity and mental health.  

SPEAKER

Matt Ball, Humane Clinic, Adelaide

Topic

This seminar will discuss the “Suicide Narratives” approach which seeks to understand a person’s unique phenomenological reality and their current experience that life is unsustainable.

About the speaker

Matt Ball is a Nurse Practitioner and Psychotherapist and founder of Humane Clinic, Adelaide. 

Matt teaches and consults nationally and internationally on humane approaches to working with a person in distress. Humane Clinic offers an alternative to pathologising and diagnosis-led mental health systems.

Matt was awarded Australian Mental Health Nurse of the year in 2017, he has developed the Dissociachotic Framework (https://www.humaneclinic.com.au/dissociachotic) as an alternative understanding of extreme states and more recently published on the Suicide Narrative approach (https://www.humaneclinic.com.au/suicide-narratives).  

In 2021, Matt will lead the team opening the Just Listening Community, a community-led alternative environment for people in distress (www.justlistening.com.au).

Eligibility

VTMH seminars are open to individuals, from all disciplines and working in all sectors, who are based in Australia and interested in diversity and mental health.  

SPEAKER

Emeritus Professor Andrew Markus AO, Monash University

Topic

This seminar will discuss the findings of the Scanlon Foundation social cohesion surveys conducted in May, July and November 2020. 

Three thematic areas will be covered:  indications of well-being, views of government policy responses, and the extent of discriminatory attitudes within segments of Australian society and their impact on the Chinese-Australian community.

About the speaker

Andrew Markus AO is Emeritus Professor in Monash University’s Faculty of Arts and a Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia.  His research specialisation is in the field of racial and ethnic relations, ethnic communities, and immigration policy.

Andrew has extensive experience researching Australian public opinion, beginning in 1988 when he was commissioned to prepare a report on ‘How Australians see each other’ for the Fitzgerald Committee on immigration policy. He has played a leading role in the two national surveys on attitudes within the Jewish community and is the senior researcher for the Scanlon Foundation social cohesion survey, which has conducted annual surveys since 2009. 

Eligibility

VTMH seminars are open to individuals, from all disciplines and working in all sectors, who are based in Australia and interested in diversity and mental health.