2022 Rising Woman of Spirit Award: An Invisible Child Carer of a Parent with Mental Health Complexities

On the 17th August 2022, I was honoured to receive Lifeline Canberra ’s Rising Women of Spirit Award. I would like to thank Dr Anita Togolo for the nomination and the continued efforts of both Anita and Frank Bakoles to provide guidance and opportunities for First Nations people through their Indigenous owned recruitment agency, 3 Emus Recruitment Pty Ltd .

I’d also like to thank Lifeline Canberra for acknowledging and recognising my fellow finalists for their profound contributions to the community and sector.

As a recipient of the 2022 Rising Women of Spirit Award I have a responsibility to not only raise awareness about the issues faced by consumers and carers, but to also advocate for greater understanding of the unique complexities each individual person may encounter when navigating the mental health system.

As a child, I became a carer for my single mum who had severe mental health complications. Mum was often hospitalised in acute mental health facilities for long periods of time. As a result of this and with the addition of discrimination and stigma associated with mental health, I was often left home alone with no parent, no support and isolated from family, friends, and community.

Not only were we unable to access appropriate and accountable mental health care for her, but as a child carer I also faced systemic neglect as the systems and services in place to protect children and their families did not consider our situation, or its complexities.

I was left at home as a child with no parent or guardian, with the only alternative being removal from my home. The health and education system, policy and community services were aware of our situation but did not uphold their duty of care.

As a child and then teenager, I was unable to visit my mum in hospital as I was under 18 years old which required a parent or guardian present to enter the acute mental health facility. I was excluded from contributing to her caring arrangements by all health professionals until I was in my early twenties. This meant I was unable to build meaningful and effective relationships to contribute to continuity of mental health care arrangements.

As a result, holistic mental health care was not provided and enabled passing the liability of the patient to other professionals, doctor shopping with multiple diagnosis and variations of medication only to repeat the cycle and return to the acute mental health facilities. Due to the amount of hospitalisations, she was able to learn to navigate the flawed mental health system to avoid being hospitalised for long periods of time, but remained untreated.

As a product of our broken mental health system, the authorities which left me unattended at home as a child at twelve years old were the same ones who had to remove me from my home at age twenty-two as an environment that was unsafe had further escalated.

Whilst at home caring for mum I commenced a Bachelor of Psychology at the University of Wollongong. The course content made me realise the mental health system is not addressing these issues and I would continue to be frustrated as a practicing Psychologist if I continued, due to the lack of duty of care, cultural capability, access to services and referral pathways. I realised then I had to influence and create change to the law and policy surrounding the mental health system and decided to focus on a Bachelor of Social Sciences in Social Policy, and then complete a Masters of Business Management.

My desire to change the mental health system led to my employment as Director, Strategy and Operations at Gayaa Dhuwi (Proud Spirit) Australia , the national peak body for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander social and emotional wellbeing, mental health and suicide prevention.

I have received endless support from the previous CEO of Gayaa Dhuwi, Tom Brideson YES . Tom often highlighted the importance of my voice as mine would not be an isolated story, but others wouldn’t have the same opportunity to raise these issues.

In reflecting upon my own personal lived experience, and now in my professional life, it saddens me that the system continues to be ineffective and unresponsive to the needs of child carers. To my knowledge, there has not been a policy or framework which appropriately addresses the needs of child carers and their families. Carers are mentioned frequently and consulted with, but the scope of this lived experience is often limited to adult carers and consumers in the mental health system. I am passionate about changing this.

Lifeline Canberra’s 2022 Rising Women of Spirit Award has been a great opportunity to reflect on my story and use this to advocate on behalf of other child carers who may be experiencing the same systemic neglect. I’m looking forward to working with Lifeline Canberra to exploring how we can collectively progress this important work.