During this period of catastrophic fire we wanted to respond in the most useful way we could, recognising that there would be an offer of government support in the immediate aftermath we turned to how we could support the long term healing experienced by community in the wake of collective trauma like that left in the wake of a bushfire.
We were already partnering with Kangaroo Island through Our Town, a mental heath and wellbeing initiative involving six South Australian communities that would eventually see two of them secure a full ten year's of funding to implement community based responses to mental health. So we decided to extend the funding and provide an additional fully funded position to Kangaroo Island,
"We didn’t want the application process for the Our Town Initiative to be an additional stress at this point in time; we wanted to ensure they could focus on their short term needs, knowing they could engage with the initiative when they were ready to look towards long term mental health challenges the community may face".
The funding will complement the Federal Government’s $76M for mental health in bushfire affected areas announced last weekend, which will focus more on service provision such as counselling.
Walking alongside this community to help build and design approaches to mental health will be The Australian Centre for Social Innovation (TACSI), Clear Horizon Consulting. Across 10 years this will be a collaborative approach where each organisation will play a pivotal role in partnering with communities to surface the valuable lived experience and local knowledge to guide this emergent process.
"With bushfires still burning, much devastation and everyone in our communities affected, the support of this program will help to build the capacity of our community to support ourselves, to strengthen our resilience and to ensure our ongoing wellbeing, long after the fires are put out and the spotlight moves away from Kangaroo Island".
The towns of Kimba, Berri, Ceduna, Cummins along with a cluster of communities in the Mid Murray region are other communities that have been shortlisted for the remaining two 10-year funding allocations. In 2020 these communities will receive seed funding and support to develop long-term plans to build mental health capability.
Our Town differs from other mental health initiatives as it is not about putting additional services in place or recruiting new mental health professionals. The initiative seeks to fund and empower rural and regional communities to build sustainable internal capability to meet the mental health challenges their communities face.
Interested in hearing more about the Our Town initiative?
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