Peer-led Regionally Informed Systemic Advocacy Meetings (P.R.I.S.A.M.)
CoMHWA is excited to announce the formation of a new advisory group to help us ensure that we direct our systemic advocacy efforts to address issues facing consumers living in regional and remote locations. PRISAM is a regionally focused variation of a group we already run called the ‘Consumer Advised Systemic Advocacy Meeting’ (CASAM). The purpose of these groups is to let our members directly collaborate with the systemic advocacy team, discussing their thoughts about structural problems they experience and potential opportunities to provoke change, so that we can target our efforts towards emerging issues as well as concerns that our members feel are important to address. CoMHWA also uses this collaboration with our members to help design, and get feedback on, forthcoming position papers, submissions, and briefing papers. We are committed to ensuring that, through PRISAM, our remote and regional members have direct input into CoMHWA’s actions on a variety of systemic issues.
Currently, PRISAM is planned to consist of around ten consumers, and will be facilitated by CoMHWA staff from the systemic advocacy team. PRISAM will meet for two hours, once every two months, with an agenda agreed upon at least a week prior to the meeting. Members of PRISAM will be paid for the 2-hour meeting as well as for an additional hour of preparation time to read the agenda and any associated briefing papers or documents. The initial terms of reference and group agreement for PRISAM will be consultatively developed and codified as the first order of business, ensuring that those undertaking this role have direct feedback into the scope and expectations surrounding membership.
If you are a CoMHWA member with lived experience of mental health struggles, who lives in a regional or remote area, and you have relevant experience in mental health advocacy, we invite you to get in contact with us. To apply, you can submit your details through the following PRISAM expression of interest form. Our hope is that together with our members, we can form an effective group that spans across the majority of regional areas in WA. Because we want to ensure as many regions and communities as possible are represented in PRISAM, we cannot guarantee that we will be able to accommodate everyone who applies. However, we encourage any regional members who are passionate about systemic problems facing regional and remote consumers to reach out and register your interest. If you have any questions, please email Charles Foster, the current coordinator of PRISAM, at cfoster@comhwa.org.au.
