From the CEO
At the recent Australia New Zealand TheMHS conference, the premier mental health conference, we were able to showcase a number of our services and achievements to a very large audience. I will focus on two of the presentations.
Firstly there were two presentations on our Hospital to Home (H2H) program, one presented by One Door staff and the other by Dr Justin Scanlon, Sydney University, who led the team that completed the independent evaluation of or program. H2H operated in three regions, two metropolitan and one regional. Approximately 160 people accessed the program during the short period that it operated. H2H assisted the consumers post discharge from a psychiatric admission unit with follow up for up to 12 weeks.
All of our workers were peer workers, that is, people who also were living with a mental illness. The basic figures are so impressive. There was not one suicide attempt, there was only one readmission during the follow up phase, all consumers rated the program highly. Unfortunately the funding for these programs was short term and we are now seeking funding from other sources.
The second presentation that I want to mention focused on our 16 year partnership with Mike Preston from headjam. Together we ran many stigma reduction campaigns and multi media campaigns during Schizophrenia Awareness Week. Some of these campaigns won international awards. We presented a montage of our work over the 16 years. We plan to reproduce this presentation at next year’s Symposium.
Both presentations were highly regarded with very positive feedback from the attendees. I should also note that there were a further nine presentations by One Door staff or covering work within One Door, including a number by Dr Richard Schweizer, our Consumer Advocate within the Advocacy and Social Inclusion Unit.
Hope to see many of you at our 2017 AGM at our head office at Gladesville on Sunday 26 November.
Rob Ramjan | CEO
To read more from the October 2017 eNews, click here.