Let’s Talk Anxiety Sutherland Shire
In May, WayAhead collaborated with South Eastern Sydney LHD to host a Let’s Talk About Anxiety Sutherland Shire Forum and to deliver three Small Steps Childhood Anxiety seminars to the community.
On 2 May, more than 100 people attended the Let’s Talk About Anxiety Sutherland Shire forum, including people working in the health and education sectors as well as individuals attending to find out more for themselves, their family and friends.
Our keynote speaker, Monique Shipp, Clinical Psychologist Registrar, presented information about anxiety disorders and her clinical specialty, Selective Mutism. WayAhead’s Paul Leonard spoke about his personal experience with anxiety, as did our other compelling lived experience speaker, Alison Li. Alison’s partner Alex Li spoke about his role as carer and supporter for Alison an extremely valuable perspective that resonated strongly with the audience. Lived experience stories help us achieve our goal to reduce stigma surrounding mental health conditions in the community.
We were joined at the forum by local mental health services in Sutherland Shire who explained how to access their programs: CESPHN, headspace; Interrelate-Counselling, Kurranulla Aboriginal Corporation, Lifeline/Wesley Mission, Lilli Pilli Counselling,
NSW Public Mental health Service, One Door Mental Health/Head to Health and Orana NSW Inc.
Over 50 people attended our three Small Steps Childhood Anxiety seminars for Sutherland Shire on 17 May. Parent/carers, teachers, health and education workers learned about WayAhead’s ‘’Small Steps’’ process to reducing the impact of childhood anxiety.
As a result, we have connected with local schools and booked Small Steps seminars for individual school staff and parent/carer communities.
Providing community forums and Small Steps seminars allows WayAhead to take a whole of community approach where we can all work together to reduce the impact of anxiety in families and communities throughout NSW.
