Life Without Respite
Last week Arafmi Ltd attended the 2nd NDIS Mental Health Conference, our CEO was invited to speak at the Lived Experience workshops alongside Tania Curlis and Amaya Alvarez from Tandem. He chose to speak about ‘Life Without Respite’ and understanding the struggle to access respite services and its impact upon carers and their families. Unfortunately, this topic is becoming more and more popular due to the shortcomings of NDIS, we feel strongly about sharing this abstract. Last year, I brought to the conference a presentation that invited the audience to contemplate what it would mean to have no mental health respite services. In Queensland with the federal Mental Health Respite: Carer Support (MHR:CS) funding being rolled into the NDIS and little remaining state funding for mental health respite, life without respite is becoming a reality for some people with mental illness and their carers. Arafmi Ltd has been supporting mental health carers for over 40 years. We currently have five respite houses for people with mental illness across South East Queensland. These houses provide people with a mental illness a friendly and supportive environment where they can take a break from daily life stressors and participate in a range of…