Support groups: There’s a group for everyone
Let’s face it, we all need a shoulder to lean on at times, and it’s particularly helpful while you’re in the middle of a health crisis. But sometimes finding the right support can be a real challenge. Though establishing connections with people that just “get it” can make all the difference.
Support groups play a vital role in helping people with practical advice and strategies, as well as providing emotional and social solidarity. For over 38 years Connect Groups, the peak body for support groups in Western Australia, have been providing guidance and resources to people looking to attend or establish groups in their area of need.
Connect Groups support over 700 members across WA (in regional areas too), and around 150 are specifically for mental health. Though there are groups for other health conditions, such as cancer care, bereavement and grief, and chronic and genetic illness. And they all have lived-experience as their foundation for peer-to-peer support.
Women make up 80% of the sector, which is mostly volunteer-led. This includes those who are both facilitating and participating in groups, as well as those attending men’s groups as carers. The biggest challenge many people face in getting the right support is a lack of awareness about the options available to them. People just don’t know what’s out there, and for little to no cost.
Primary healthcare falls chronically short in linking people to external services and considering social support needs. And despite much of the public health rhetoric about “holistic, person-centred care”, we constantly hear feedback from patients regarding a lack of integrated, consumer-led solutions.
And navigating the system on your own can be enormously frustrating. However, Connect Groups can assist as a first point of call, and help point you in the right direction.
“If people contact us (directly), we can give them a more holistic service, which is more effective than directly going just to a support group”, advised chief executive, Antonella Segre.
“It takes much courage to acknowledge something isn’t right for help, so if people come through the telephone service we can hold their hand until they’re ready to be released.”
Connect Groups is a small organisation but offers broad guidance and services to its members as well as the general public (including those looking to attend or start a group, and to get help for an existing group — some brokered funding is also available). And like many other community services organisations, they are significantly under-resourced to meet the demands (all staff are parttime and even the chief executive is involved in on-the-ground service delivery).
Over the course of their history the organisation has only seen marginal increases in funding, as low as an extra $1 added to their government service agreements, despite the growing need. But they are involved in a number of really innovative social initiatives, including leading the “Alternatives to Suicide” alliance, and have also achieved some good outcomes with a social prescribing pilot at Fiona Stanley Hospital.
But when Covid hit early last year the pilot program’s funding was cut (arguably at the worst time, when mental health issues escalated and social support became even more vital), despite it being a key recommendation in the government’s own Sustainable Health Review (what the?).
Support groups are a critical component of our social infrastructure. And it’s clear that the sector needs more resourcing to facilitate linkages between patients and support services, to help achieve better health outcomes for West Australians. Healing happens in communities and nothing beats the deep understanding and sense of connection that lived experience provides — it’s priceless.
Connect Groups: 08 9364 6909
This article was first published in The West Australian in Renée Gardiner’s weekly column in Agenda, 31 July 2021.