Mental health emergency e-Bulletin
17 May 2010
Dear [FirstName],
As many of you will know, this morning I met with Nicola Roxon’s Chief of Staff (the most senior person in her office) and a senior official in the Department. I went to the meeting this morning, accompanied by Karl Charikar, the Senior Manager for Advocacy and Communications, and Stephen Brand, the convenor of the national mental health committee. Subsequently I have spoken with Bob, the National President, and informed the National Board of the broad outcomes of the meeting. I want to provide you all with as full an update as possible from my meeting.
While we don’t have a firm agreement with the Government, we have had a positive and productive meeting with Minister Roxon's Chief of Staff and a senior Department official (assistant secretary) for over one hour. The Chief of Staff opened the meeting by saying that she hoped we could find a solution and indicated the Minister’s desire to work closely with us to achieve it.
You’ll understand that I can’t provide you all with a point by point account of the content of the meeting at this stage, as we are still negotiating, but I can say we are hopeful of good outcomes for consumers and Social Workers.
The Chief of Staff is following up with the Minister on some points we raised, and has been in touch with me over the course of the day. We are awaiting a call late this evening or early tomorrow and expect they will issue a statement to the media tomorrow (Wednesday). We’ll link to it in our latest news section if it comes out, so you can find it easily. Look on the right side of the home page.
In the meantime
I know many of you are off to visit MPs and Senators in the coming days, so we have prepared a briefing and tip sheet have been prepared to assist you. The advocacy tips assist those of you who haven’t frequently engaged with your elected representatives, and the briefing contains a summary of the issues to inform your discussions.
I know many of you have been actively calling talkback radio. Well done! Please focus your efforts on the radio stations you can receive where you live or work and this has the most impact, and continue to let us know what you have achieved.
Yesterday (Monday) I spoke to ABC radio in Adelaide and in Gippsland. The Adelaide station made mention to my staff of the numerous talkback callers they had had on Friday.
Today I was invited onto the Jon Faine program on ABC radio Melbourne to respond to your excellent talkback efforts. I couldn’t reveal much about the discussions with the Minister’s office but they were pleased to give us space to say how positive the meeting was.
ABC TV in Canberra covered the story on Sunday night and you can read more about it on the ABC website here.
A collective effort
On each occasion that I’ve written to you, I’ve made sure to thank our individual members for their efforts in the 7 days since the Federal Budget, and I do so again tonight. Can I also thank the staff, both branch and national, the Branch Management Committees, National Committees and Practice Groups as well as the National Board, for their organising efforts in this emergency.
There are simply too many emails and phone messages for me to know the full picture. Although I know only a part of what has been occurring, it’s clear that many of our structures have played a mighty role in engaging with members to encourage activities, and diverted their attention from their own agenda to lend support to this campaign where it has been needed.
Check the events page for some Queensland events in support of the campaign, for example.
Older e-bulletins on this issue
Some of you have reported not receiving these e-bulletins, and we've been investigating what may be causing problems. I therefore want to provide here the links to messages delivered since the budget, so that you you have access to them as much as possible.
12 May 2010
13 May 2010
15 May 2010
Look out for more news tomorrow (Wednesday) in the latest news section and in the media releases page.
Kind regards
Kandie
Kandie Allen-Kelly
BSocWk MPhil MAASW (Acc)
Chief Executive Officer
Australian Association of Social Workers
P.O. Box 4956
Kingston ACT 2604
Tel: +61 2 6232 3903
Membership: 1800 630 124
ceo@aasw.asn.au
www.aasw.asn.au
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