Dear Members,
We hope you are all finding ways to staying warm and navigate both the winter weather, but also the COVID-19 and flu season.
We want to update Members what we’ve been up to since VMIAC created four positions to engage with Members (both of VMIAC and the Consumer Register). In this time exciting things have happen behind the scenes.
The first, which some members may have noticed already, is a change in our team’s name. When we first started this work we were called the Membership team. After consideration of our roles and our aspirations we are now the Engagement team.
The change reflect VMIAC’s goals to engage with our members and to build a community centered around the shared experience of having mental illness or experienced emotional distress.We feel that being g called the Engagement team also makes our work clearer to members, because all work across Membership and the Consumer Register.
For those of you who haven’t meet the Engagement team, we’d like to introduce:
Hiwan Giday (she/her) who joins VMIAC as the Community Development and Engagement Coordinator. This new role is intended to ensure VMIAC is engage communities which we haven’t been able to build strong relationships with in the past. Importantly (and excitingly) Hiwan will be working on creating a Reconcilation Action Plan (RAP). We know that
John Martyr (he/him) is the Engagement Project Officer. This role is instrumental to supporting us engage with members, and that consumer expertise is at the center of reforming Victoria Mental Health system.
Lisa Idris (she/her) as our Administration Coordinator is working hard to ensure our systems and processes are affirmative for consumers.
Chantelle Higgs (she/her) is Engagement Lead and this role has leadership responsibilities for membership, the consumer register.
The Engagement Team has identified and started to implemented changes we hope will improve your experiences with VMIAC. These include:
- Scoping a new user friendly membership system where you can have more control over your membership details and communication preferences
- Introducing new ways of communicating with you in a safe and secure way
- Continuing to hold monthly member meetings as a means for VMIAC and members to share knowledge, experience and resources
- Developing community building events and opportunities
You can see future dates here. The monthly meetings are a way for us to hear from consumers and also for you folks to connect. This is something you’ve told us you’ve wanted in the past. We have plans for members of Team VMIAC come along, for you to learn about their work and passions. We are also exploring other ways we can build community through these activities.
An event that VMIAC is pleased to be a part of is
Our Reform
A progress report on the effectiveness of mental health and wellbeing reform from the people who use the system.
As co-convenors of this event, we are pleased to offer VMIAC members sponsored tickets to this event. Full details are in our latest newsletter being sent out Friday the 29th of June 2022