AICAFMHA:
promoting mental health for young Australians
Australian Infant, Child, Adolescent and Family Mental Health Association Ltd
ABN 87 093 479 022

COPMI Project Update - 23/08/2002

New Resource

Vivienne Colegrove from Villa Maria Carer Services in Kew, Victoria has advised me of the release of a new resource for Secondary Teachers (and others who work with young people). The resource is called SIC and it consists of a booklet and CD.

The booklet "aims to help Victorian secondary schools and teachers better understand and assist young people who provide care for someone with a mental illness." The CD is designed to appeal to all young people. It includes two songs written by young carers, inspired by the experience of living in a family where a parent has a mental illness. On two other tracks, a young woman speaks about her mother's depression and a young man gives key contact numbers for young people to get further assistance.

The resource is free for services, schools and families in the Eastern Metropolitan Region of Melbourne. Interested parties outside of the Eastern Region can purchase the booklet for $5.00 each and the CD for $3.00 each. Phone(03) 9854 5122 for orders.

Please visit our latest version of the COPMI Resource List.

Sydney Consultations

Phil Robinson and I enjoyed meeting people from the Sydney area and those attending the TheMHS conference who came along to our recent COPMI project consultation sessions. Thankyou for all your feedback, which we will endeavour to incorporate into the COPMI Discussion Document and /or into the feedback we provide to the Commonwealth Department of Health and Ageing regarding services for families affected by a mental illness.

Reference List

Thankyou to those who gave feedback about the literature reference list on our website. New articles and books are being added every week and we have now listed the documents in the alphabetical order of the authors. A new version of the list is online now. I hope to add more references to the list over the coming month as I complete the first stage of the literature review for the project.

Program Updates

If you are running a project for families where a parent has a mental illness, please consider placing information about it on the AICAFMHA website, Children Of Parents With A Mental Illness homepage http://www.aicafmha.net.au/copmi/national/index.htm .

COPMI National Consultation Group and Discussion Document

We have now invited 184 groups or organisations to nominate a member to join the COPMI National Consultation Group and, to date, 101 have responded in the affirmative. In addition, over 170 individuals have asked to be informed about consultation and review processes associated with this project. The next step for us all will be the provision of feedback from the COPMI Discussion Document, which I hope to be able to circulate before my next COPMI Update.
Keep watching for it!

Elizabeth Fudge
Project Manager,
COPMI Initiative
Ph (08) 8161 6859
Fax (08) 81616983
fudgee@wch.sa.gov.au