The Artist in Residence (AiR) at the Alfred Mental and Addiction Health (AMAH) Inpatient Unit (IPU) was made possible because of generous philanthropic support to create new forms of therapeutic and creative activities for consumers. The project aimed to support AMAH consumers, carers, families, and the wider community through supporting the social and therapeutic benefits provided by a visual artist.

The AiR program was developed and overseen by senior members of the IPU Allied Health team, with the artist appointed to Alfred Health staff for the duration of the project. The artist was jointly supervised on site by the senior peer worker and the senior art therapist, during the length of the residency.

The residency involved the artist participating in IPU activities such as ‘coffee on the couch’, conducting practical art workshops on the ward with consumers, as well as completing large scale art works for display on the wards.
The project encompassed three interrelated aims of:
• supporting a practicing artist with lived experience of mental health challenges to engage with mental health experiences and mental health care to create art works which illuminate and destigmatize mental health;
• creating opportunities for consumers to progress their recovery, through engagement and support of consumers as ‘artists’ with creative and recovery-oriented arts workshops delivered by the artist during their residence, and;
• creating an artwork in collaboration with Alfred Health inpatients.

The project achieved these aims through the employment of a creative practitioner, who is an artist with lived-experience of mental illness, to undertake a ward-based residency to develop an arts practice that is recognised and valued by the AMAH community

Harm in mental health services to and by people with a lived experience of mental illness, mental health staff, carers, family, support staff and others has serious negative impacts. There is ongoing concern about how to best prevent and respond after incidents have occurred, such as violence, threats and conflict.

In an Australian first, a model of Restorative Practice was implemented in December 2019 in mental health services at The Prince Charles Hospital, Brisbane. This work continues and is a collaboration between these mental health services, the Queensland Health Victim Support Service and Adult Restorative Justice Conferencing Unit, Department of Justice and Attorney General.

The model of Restorative Practice includes a continuum of interventions that aim to reduce conflict and potential for harm, as well as repair harm after incidents occur.

Whilst Restorative Practice and Restorative Justice have been implemented extensively in education, youth justice and workplace settings, and more recently in other contexts, this is the first time a model has been developed and implemented in public adult secure and community mental health services in Australia.

This presentation will outline the model, implementation strategies, including training, the challenges and outcomes of an external two-and-a-half-year evaluation completed in 2023.

Community Treatment Orders (CTOs) are a form of compulsory treatment for mental health conditions in New South Wales. In NSW over the last 10 years the rates have been increasing¹ and both in Australia² ³ and internationally⁴⁵⁶ similar orders have come under scrutiny for the impacts they have on the system and the individuals affected by them.
Our work brings together perspectives from those directly experiencing a CTO, those who are supporting them, and from service providers.
This rounded view of CTOs was based on a co-design methodology including lived experiences of compulsory treatment.
The process of co-design with a government agency will be discussed with recommendations for this type of activity from both the government and agency perspectives.
The process of co-design itself will be discussed with recommendations and reflections of how this can be undertaken under the constraints of a contract.
Finally the outputs from the interviews will be briefly discussed in terms of the five themes:
Hopes, High stakes, Harms, Health services and systems, and How it’s done.

The aim of this presentation is to highlight findings from a qualitative research study about lived experiences of ECT and to discuss the relationship of the thematic findings to highlight the importance of finding Common Ground.

With controversy surrounding ECT, the reverse of common ground is the norm. People are silenced, feel stigmatised in their communities (including peer communities) and often keep their experiences hidden. This inhibits the potential to find supports to live well post ECT and to find strategies that may assist people with any consequences of treatment. They lacked support to deal with significant impacts such as grief or memory issues, having to find ways to manage these alone through trial and error. Most participants wanted peer support. Some identified being involved in the focus group as the “most peer support I’ve ever had”.

People in our study highlighted how important finding common ground was (although they didn’t use this phrase). A shared understanding with networks, particularly with peers, but also with family, friends and workers was invaluable for participants striving to develop strategies to manage or minimise long term impacts of ECT.

The presentation will highlight the benefits of Open Dialogue in youth and adult public mental health teams.
I will draw from my personal experiences as a family peer specialist working in a public health community team using Open Dialogue and as a relative of someone who received care from a team using this social network perspective.
I will describe the seven core principles, how network meetings function, and discuss recovery based on open dialogue.
My son has received case management from three different mental health teams. Through my personal experience, I will explain the different approaches.
The second treatment model for my son was Open Dialogue through network meetings. He eventually became too old for this service, but the clinicians in the third team agreed to work with him using a different model. He guided them through the model working for him and his network, and they could continue with his successful treatment plan.
This was a fantastic demonstration of finding common ground with practitioners, client and social network.