Victoria’s new anti-vilification laws could be a game-changer for mental health

In this week’s blog, Simon Katterl writes about Victoria’s proposed anti-vilification laws and their implications for vilification in mental health.

Advocacy, Policy and governance, Lived experiencePower to Persuade21 November 2024mental health, discrimination, Law

What Do You Do? Hope in Disability Policy Advocacy

As we approach the end of 2024, it seems an appropriate time to reflect on both the progress that has been made in disability equality, but also the things that we all do to protect ourselves and sustain our collective and individual advocacy efforts. In the Spring 2024 Edition of the Canberra Disability Review , Editor Rob Donnelly invited readers to do this, by responding to the question: What do you do that helps you to keep going, and maintain some measure of hope, when progress towards a fairer and more inclusive Australia is under heavy fire?

Advocacy for Inclusion’s Head of Policy, Craig Wallace, and the Disability Leadership Institute’s CEO and Founder, Christina Ryan, shared their perspectives.

Unseen Impact: How Unpaid Caregiving Shapes Health and Lives

Care-giving can be a rich and complex experience that is both rewarding and challenging. Enrico Pfeifer (@EnricoPfeifer1), a PhD Candidate at the University College London, knows this first-hand. Today, he explores his doctoral research on the impact that care-giving can have on people’s health, and how we can support care-givers to stay healthy.

'Care is in everything we do and everything we are': the work of Indigenous women

Gender, Lived experiencePower to Persuade2 October 2024care work, Indigenous issues, women and work

We should be looking at what we can add to children’s lives instead of what we take away

This week Prime Minister Anthony Albanese announced the government's plan to introduce legislation to ban younger teens from social media. Today, Cadhla O’Sullivan (@CadhlaOSull) and Sharon Bessell (@BessellSharon) from the Children’s Policy Centre at ANU, highlight what other approaches are worth considering.

Advocacy, Lived experience, Service DeliveryPower to Persuade13 September 2024Children, social media

Prioritizing Child Safety Over Gold Medals: Learning from Abuse Survivors in Sports

The whole world watches the Olympics and Paralympics, and national pride and achievement are front and centre. In today’s post, VicHealth postdoctoral research fellow Aurélie Pankowiak (@AureliePanko) of Victoria University (@iHealthSportVU) argues more resources need to be invested to ensure sport participants are safe from abuse. Learning from lived experience would allow for trauma-informed guidelines for both prevention and response and enable the creation of safer sport organisations.

Lived experiencePower to Persuade25 July 2024child abuse, Policy making, Lived/consumer experience

Firsthand experience of migration, homelessness and disability reveals shortcomings in access to political participation: Student reflections on power and governance

Policy and governance, Lived experiencePower to Persuade9 July 2024politics and democracy, housing and homelessness, migration, mental health, Disability

Australia’s response to preventing forced marriage should begin with listening to the needs of young women.

Gender, Lived experience, Policy and governancePower to Persuade5 July 2024women, Women's safety, violence against women

We need a more humane budget - now more than ever

Antipoverty Centre, Lived experience, Policy and governancePower to Persuade10 May 2024JobSeeker, housing

As a single parent, Jobseeker is brutal. Government should come up with a better 'Placesaver' to help me into my next job

Advocacy, Lived experiencePower to Persuade24 April 2024welfare conditionality, welfare reform

How international recognition of cultural practices could be a new way to protect refugees

Camps are dynamic, culturally significant spaces. New research from the University of Newcastle proposes the significance of these cultural practices may provide an alternative pathway to protection.

Transitioning out of youth involvement roles: an interview with a Youth Involvement Officer and Senior Patient and Public Involvement and Engagement Lead

Within mental health research and service delivery, involvement of experts by experience has become increasingly common. The involvement of experts by experience allows for the design and delivery of research that is of higher quality and more rigorous.

Transitioning out of youth-focussed lived experience groups is a matter that is not well understood and, for many reasons, complex. It can be difficult to transition from the role of being a young contributor to research into a professional in the Public and Patient Involvement space. Working in lived experience roles, either as ‘lived experience practitioners’, ‘peer support workers’, ‘PPI facilitators’ or ‘involvement officers’ can be complex and the relationships you hold in these spaces vary depending on your positioning within either the group or the organisation (Carr, 2019).

In this blog we explore the experience of Beckye, a former Youth Advisory Group (YAG) member for the University of Birmingham’s Institute for Mental Health as she begins the making this transition into an employee in a Youth Involvement Officer. The blog takes the form of responses to an with Beckye (Youth Involvement Officer) and Niyah (Senior Patient and Public Involvement and Engagement Lead). The interview offers early reflections that may be of use to organisations or individuals who may be supporting folk undertaking these transitions or in the process of negotiating the transition themselves.

How being on the Disability Support Pension has allowed me to stabilise my mental health

Advocacy, Lived experiencePower to Persuade29 February 2024Disability, welfare conditionality

Workers, workers, workers

Lived experience, Policy and governancePower to Persuade3 December 2023NDIS, disability, housing

LGBTQ+ training in social care should be mandatory for all social workers

Accessibility, Creating using evidence, Lived experience, Service Delivery, Social Service FuturesPower to Persuade25 October 2023Policy making, LGBTIQ+ issues, social care, social services

Storytelling for stigma reduction: Researcher and peer reflections

Lived experiencePower to Persuade20 October 2023mental health

Victoria's new leadership offers a chance for renewed mental health reform

Lived experience, Policy and governance, PoliticsPower to Persuade5 October 2023mental health, Lived/consumer experience

What are Foodbank prices really like?

Advocacy, Lived experience, Finance and economicsPower to Persuade3 October 2023Poverty

Alone Australian or collaboration for the nation we want?

Dr Millie Rooney, co-director of Australia Remade and long-time contributor here at Power to Persuade, has had some great ideas for new reality TV shows, following the success of ‘Alone Australia’. The question is - do we have contestants going it alone to survive, or a team effort to re-imagine a way for everyone to thrive?

Implementing Trauma-Informed Care in the Proposed National Housing and Homelessness Plan

Exploring the pressing need for trauma-informed care in Australia's National Housing and Homelessness Plan, Research Fellow Chris Hartley sheds light on the deep links between trauma and homelessness while advocating for a unified, comprehensive approach to address the issue in line with global best practices.

Lived experience, Politics, Service DeliveryPower to Persuade11 August 2023housing and homelessness, trauma

Blog

THIS WEEK’S MODERATOR