MIFA Roundtable and Conference
The MIFA Network and our partners came together in Canberra across three days, from 13 to 15 November, to celebrate our collective achievements in 2023 and to continue our advocacy on addressing the gap in psychosocial supports.
To open the MIFA Conference, we dined with MIFA Board Directors and CEOs from our MIFA Member organisations, sharing stories from the past year and our hopes for the service delivery landscape in 2024.
We hosted several events on 14 November that focussed on improving psychosocial supports for people living with severe and complex mental health conditions.
The MIFA Network was joined by our sector colleagues, including mental health peak bodies, lived experience leaders, researchers and representatives from the Department of Health and Aged Care and the Department of Social Services, to share current projects that are underway to quantify the unmet need and demand for psychosocial supports around the country under the National Mental Health and Suicide Prevention Agreement.
We also heard about other mental health mapping projects that have been conducted by the University of Canberra to quantity the level of need across different PHNs and to assess levels of mental distress using MBS data. We came away with the knowledge that there are various high-level unmet needs analysis projects underway and that there are learnings and insights to share that contribute to our collective understanding of how we can co-design psychosocial supports with people with severe and complex mental health conditions and their families and carers.
Following these discussions, we were pleased to host MIFA’s Annual General Meeting and MIFA Conference Dinner. We celebrated a year of strong achievements with our advocacy efforts and in elevating lived experience leadership through Finding North and Finding North Network. We acknowledged the fifth year of Out From The Mist, with entries from 23 countries around the world, and we paid tribute to the efforts of everyone involved in delivering the Australian Psychosis Conference in September. We had the opportunity to thank and acknowledge our valued sponsors, funders and supporters and share a beautiful dinner with those who were able to join us.
The last day of the MIFA Conference saw the MIFA Network come together for the final time to discuss strategic directions for 2024, before we bid adieu for another year.
We take this opportunity to thank everyone from the MIFA Network. Your contributions support our work every day and enhance our effectiveness and impact.
