A co-design workshop tackling mental health and suicide prevention in our region was held by the Council of Mayors Suicide Prevention Taskforce last Thursday at the MECC.
This was the second workshop held by the Taskforce and saw mayors and councillors from the Mackay, Isaac and Whitsunday regions collaborate with service providers, funding providers, community and those with lived experience.
Mackay Regional Council Deputy Mayor and Chair of the Taskforce Karen May says the Taskforce was formed after conversations with Suicide Prevention Community Action Plan Worker Deb Rae, councillors and Mayor Greg Williamson around concerns about suicide rates in the Greater Whitsunday Region and the difficulty residents face in accessing and navigating appropriate healthcare services.
“We went to the mayor putting the case of what needed to be addressed and we identified that perhaps a Greater Whitsunday Council of Mayors Taskforce might be a good way to get all of the people in the room and have an open discussion about how we can rectify this problem,” Ms May said.
The Council of Mayors Suicide Prevention Taskforce was established, and the first workshop was held in May 2021 with the goal of identifying the issues involved.
Taskforce Project Officer Courtney Wilson says the second workshop intends to provide solutions to the issues raised in a collaborative format.
“It’s done in a way that everyone’s voice is equal and we have a room full of people with all different lenses, they all have really different valuable things to offer and it becomes really creative and exciting because everyone has different thoughts,” Ms Wilson said.
Throughout the workshop, a presentation was made by a representative of the Lived Experience Advisory Group, sharing a message of having services that represent indigenous communities and meeting individual needs without making assumptions.
Fellow Lived Experiences Representative Emma Rix says the current system is too reliant on assumptions.
“I think we need to have a way of getting to know someone before we decide what service is best for them and that’s what’s missing,” Ms Rix said.
Presentations were also made by organisations including Roses in the Ocean, which has experience in co-designing solutions alongside people with lived experiences, and My Community Directory, which spoke about the potential for a centralised database of service providers.
“That was one of the biggest areas of need, was that we don’t really have anything we can go to find information, you get bounced around and it’s really quite difficult,” Ms Wilson said.
Attendees then participated in co-designing and co-creating in groups, responding to case studies and identifying problems and solutions.
One of the biggest barriers identified was funding and resources.
L-R Lived Experiences Representative Emma Rix, Taskforce Project Officer Courtney Wilson, Taskforce Chair Karen May and Cyclic Konnectionz Founding Director Fiona Bobongie
