Monday June 19th 2023

Recently, BEING – Mental Health Consumers changed its legal status to enable it to accept tax-deductible donations from individuals and organisations. We are delighted to announce today that all the systems are in place for us to receive donations.

While BEING receives some funding from NSW Health, the lion’s share of this funding is attributed to specific areas of work. Unfortunately, it doesn’t fully cover BEING to pursue all of the issues of importance as identified by BEING members.

By diversifying the range of our funding sources to include donations, BEING strengthens its position to advocate with impact on behalf of NSW’s mental health consumers.

Through its advocacy, BEING plays an important role in improving consumer outcomes by advocating for change in the NSW mental health system. Sometimes services and systems need to change to provide the best outcomes for individuals. BEING has as its key role trying to understand where services and systems can be improved and contributing to the change process. Areas where we have really made a difference include:

  • raising awareness and holding the system to account to reduce the use of seclusion, and physical and chemical restraint in mental health settings
  • increasing the adoption of co-design by training and mentoring consumers to feel empowered to advocate for better government mental health systems in NSW
  • supporting and hosting training in therapeutic approaches that are alternatives to the biomedical model such as the power threat framework and intentional peer support

There are many organisations providing excellent individual services and personal advocacy support to mental health consumers within the existing system. A donation to BEING is different because it helps to improve the whole mental health system that all consumers rely on now or in the past, improving the outcomes for every NSW resident experiencing mental health challenges.

If you can make a donation to BEING – Mental Health Consumers, please know your gift will make a real difference.

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BEING uses the Raisely platform to process our donations, along with organisations like Beyond Blue, Oxfam, FoodBank, the Starlight Children’s Foundation and Act for Peace.