Another busy day

Next stop, Gladesville, which is north west of Sydney and where the offices of The Schizophrenia Fellowship are found. Now an intrepid traveller, I set out by train and a couple of buses to find out more about ‘On Fire!’, the camps and services that are delivered by The Schizophrenia Trust for COPMI young carers as part of the Family and Carers Mental Health Programme.

‘On Fire!’ began its development around ten years ago when Nicolas Yeo decided to use his own experiences to improve the lives of children and young people who lived with the impact of a family member’s mental ill health. Central to the development was Nicolas’s belief that what helps children is an opportunity to builds on strengths rather than to dwell on difficulties or to pathologise. His premise has meant that the camps have a slightly different angle to Camp Kookaburra and Young Carers NSW.

Over the last decade ‘On Fire!’ has continued to grow, moving on from the provision of camps alone to the addition of fun days and currently to a more comprehensive service which provides various options for ongoing 1:1 or group support. The camps incorporate issues such as well-being literacy including mental health literacy and peer to peer support, these being delivered through child friendly activities rather than through chat groups.

Whilst in Australia I have been really taken by the great number of volunteers contributing to service delivery and by the quality of those volunteers, many of whom are highly skilled. On completing camp around 25% of young carers go on to take up support provided by a bank of 200 volunteers using a model centred on life coaching. Young carers can opt for facilitated group tele-chats where they can maintain the links made on camp, fortnightly groups or 1:1 tele life coaching.



A great place to stop for lunch: the beautiful Queen Victoria Building

Now head back to the city and then off across the Sydney Harbour Bridge for the walk to Neutral Bay where I wanted to visit an organisation called Holyoake.

  

Queen Victoria Building - again

Holyoake is the biggest NGO in Western Australia where it began life in the 80’s supporting people affected by a family member’s alcohol or drug use. Holyoake in Neutral Bay runs groups for both children and adult carers; the children’s programme being called ‘Kaleidoscope’. The link between mental ill health and substance misuse is well documented and it is not surprising that many of the young carers that we see back in Gloucestershire are impacted by both. Sydney is no different and Holyoake, with the support of ARAFMI, has responded to this through the recent development of a co-morbidity group which they have piloted for a group of children. Of course so many of the issues and messages are the same; ‘I didn’t cause it, I can’t fix it’, knowing what you can and can’t change, identifying roles and feelings, communication, safety etc. Some creative ideas have been used to help children to begin to understand quite complex issues such as using single coloured sweets and multi coloured ‘allsorts’ to try and make sense of the inter-relation between mental illness and substance use.

To finish the day off I popped back into the COPMI young carer’s holiday programme which I have attended over the last two days and where the children were being led in dramatic and musical activity by a member of Opera Australia. What fun! I am very much looking forward to the final show in front of parents although I think that I will miss the children asking me to say ‘Gloucestershire’ over and over again, which they seem to find very humorous. They are all proficient in spelling both Gloucestershire and Worcestershire now!

Ken Done has re-interpreted Captain Cook and has re-dressed Queen Victoria as part of Sydney Statues Project with Art & About.