Summary / Most Important Things

• Pharmaceutical Society of Australia

• Orygen ASEAN Pacific youth mental health fellowship

• YACWA Youth Awards

• Preparing for TheMHS

• Unfiltered progress

• Safe Spaces by Roses in the Ocean

• Bri at the UWA Pride Fest

• Read For Rights

• Preparing for Albany 2026

• Integrity shorts!

• So many grant applications!

• Mental Health Week grant success!

• Storage Unit

Welcome to our newsletter!

Oh my golly gosh, August has been eventful. I have been on two trips this month and will be off on another when this newsletter is released. I am packing all my things frantically right now, questioning why I decided to submit three abstracts!

We have also been announced as finalists in the YACWA Youth Awards under the ‘The Y Collective Action’ category (and Rachael under the ECU Community Leadership category).

I have been busy planning and preparing for our trip to Albany next year in February and securing funding wherever possible. I have also been developing a lot of content, we had our storage unit move, and I am busy preparing for the care packages in CAHS beginning in October.

PROGRAM UPDATE: Caring With Integrity

Caring With Integrity is our flagship program which delivers care packages to people receiving treatment in mental health spaces. These packages contain aterial goods (toiletries, journals, fidget toys, skincare etc) alongside resources which inform them of their rights and help them to advocate for these rights. It also creates and provides clinical staff materials to help them better understand the needs of the people they are caring for.

• Caring With Integrity is officially launching its packages in October, with Perth Children’s Hospital ward 5A (mental health ward). This will co-incide with Mental Health Week. We are looking into options for media stories/ content around this!

• We are also planning a package delivery to Albany Acute Psychiatric Unit in February of 2026 (however, our ability to undertake this trip - discussed later - pending funding). IF YOU HAVE AN IDEA OR ABILITY TO SUPPORT WIH FUNDING, PLEASE LET US KNOW!!!!

PROGRAM UPDATE: Workshops

Our workshops have been progressing nicely! I have been utilising spare time (not that I have any) to develop PowerPoints that give a basic overview/ structure of what each workshop will look like. I am hoping that within the next couple of months I will have some of the basic modules pulled together! So far I have been focusing my energy on ‘Compassionate Creation’, ‘Unfiltered’, ‘Peers, Partnership and Profession’, ‘Integral language’, ‘Real Talk, Real Change’ and our elevator pitch… well alongside our TheMHS presentations, my presentation for the Mental Health Commission, and for the City of Cockburn 😂

PROGRAM UPDATE: Community engagement

This month's community work has been much more focused on networking and relationships than on events themselves. Bri and I both attended the Pride WA theme launch, where we got to chat with some very epic people. Bri did some networking at the UWA Pride Fest, and I networked my little heart out in Kuala Lumpur. We have been planning so many events and getting the ball rolling - they will start to take off again in October following TheMHS.

Events

Past Events

• UWA Pride - Bri organised and attended the UWA PrideFEST, sharing bout Integrity Initiative and what it means to them. I was in Kuala Lumpur, and I have so much appreciation for the way Bri organised this and carried it out so smoothly. Thank you so much for all of your incredible work, Bri.

• Bri and Rachael attended the PrideFEST launch event in the city where Read For Rights was announced as an official PrideFEST Plus event. This is super exciting - we look forward to marking our presence within such a beautiful and welcoming community.

Upcoming Events

• Compassionate Creation and Ignite Integrity at TheMHS. On Wednesday the 3rd of September and Thursday the 4th respectively. We will talk more about these in the next newsletter!

  
  

  
  

  

  
  

• Unfiltered - collaboration between Integrity Initiative and How To Be Well (Lily Gresele). Scheduled for Sunday October 12th at 10am, the Backlot Perth. More information is available here. This IS a ticketed event, and rockets are selling fast… however we are hoping to hold more than one event for this (stay tuned also!)

  
  

  
  

  

  
  

  
  

• Read For Rights - a collaboration with Maeson’s soapbox for PrideFEST 2025 NOTE - THIS IS NOT A TICKETED EVENT BUT WE ENCOURAGE YOU TO EXPRESS YOUR INTEREST SO THAT WE CAN DETERMINE HOW MANY PEOPLE WE CAN EXPECT https://www.eventbrite.com.au/e/read-for-rights-tickets-1507770906369

• Pilot with CAHS - this is scheduled to be happenign in October!

• Albany trip - happening in February of 2026, stay tuned for more information to come shortly

• *NEW ANNOUNCEMENT* “It’s All In Your Head” panel discussion in collaboration with City of Cockburn. This will be taking place on Mental Health Week - likely October 7th (TBC). Stay tuned for more information about this! I am in the process of putting together a panel as well as a presentation, some zines, and a digital library!

• *NEW ANNOUNCEMENT* - Integrity Initiative at the Menal Health Commission. On Thursday October 9th, I will be going to the Mental Health Commission to deliver a 20-minute speech to the MHC staff, with a Q&A and morning tea in recognition of Mental Health Week! I will be talking all about Integrity Initiative, what it is, how it formed, what we have achieved so far, and what the future looks like for us.

PROGRAM UPDATE: Integrity Shorts

In line with the feedback we have heard from nurses and from clinical staff, short-form videos seem to be one of the most convenient and transferable ways to receive information and to engage with our work. They have also been a beneficial tool in applying for grants! Because of this, I have started putting together video ‘pitches’ and introductions available on our website as an alternative learning method (it is also ABSOLUTELY a case of work smarter, not harder - they have been part of many of the grants I have applied for and make the process of doing so easier.

Here is the link to the web page where we will be publishing all of our short-form content!

Grants and funding

• I have still been applying for grants as much as I can and have begun to have some promising feedback. Nothing confirmed yet, but watch this space!

• We have submissions put together and ready to be actioned for the upcoming City of Cockburn and City of Fremantle grants

• We have successfully received $996.00 from Neami in support of our Read For Rights pride event in November (a collaboration between Integritry Initiative and Maeson’s Soapbox and featured as a part of PrideFEST Plus

• We have also been successful in receiving a Mental Health Week equipment grant! We received $1,000 to create our own Integrity Initiative t-shirts, which we will not only be able to use for our team, but also for in care packages, so that people have comfortable clothing that is also mental health ward-approved!

Current involvement opportunities/ calls for help

• We have a potential opportunity to volunteer in running a safe space - this will depend on the outcome of the grant, which will hopefully be shared very soon. Keep an eye out on our channels - if we are successful we will certainly be announcing it soon!

• Anyone free on the weekend of the 13th and 14th of September who wants to help us putting together care packages for CAHS and sorting out our storage unit, we’d love your help. Let me know and I can forward you the calendar invite! )

Travel

I have been travelling all around the world this month>

• I went to Sydney to speak on a panel about pediatric medicine harms for the Pharmaceutical Society of Australia. It was an incredible chance to give a voice to people like myself who have been so harmed by dosing errors, restrictive medicine practice and iatrogenic harm by way of prescribing errors

• I travelled to Kuala Lumpur for the orygen Global ASEAN-Pacific Youth Mental Health Fellowship that I have been completing and had the chance to pitch Integrity Initiative to the Malaysian Ministry of Health at the Centre of Excellence for Mental Health. It was an incredibly eye-opening experience… and I have already written about it at length just here

Side note - potentially my favourite part of the whole forum was dancing to this EPIC song… mandatory at all future Integrity Army meetings? I think YES! I have not stopped doing it AT LEAST ONCE PER DAY ever since I got home.’

Partners

• We have mainly been focusing on building partnerships in Albany this month as we prepare for our Albany trip - we have been in contact with several organisations and businesses down there that we hope to engage with when we make our trip. Massive shoutout to Rachel Bass - the fantastic key support and Peer worker at WACHS Albany who has made this while engagement possible! You’re the best Rach!

External advocacy updates

• I have had a few opportunities arise in this field - but I will keep them under wraps for now until they are more developed and ready to share with the world! I will hopefully have more updates soon!

Resources

• I have been working on a couple of resources around what is and what is not appropriate language to be using in clinical settings. They provide basic guidance to help navigate difficult conversations

• I am excited to get some of these developed for Read For Rights and to get more of information delivered around Perth! (I managed to get funding for us to purchase some flyers, brochures and a banner!)

Donations

• Much of the donation seeking has been on hold whilst we move into our storage unit and given that the focus has been more significantly on our actions and day-to-day operations.

• We have enough stock to see us through the pilots of our packages we have planned until mid 2026, however we are now slightly shifting to collecting books, toys and games for our Read For Rights event in November. IF YOU HAVE ANY BOOKS, TOYS, GAMES, CRAFTS, OR HOBBY MATERIALS THAT YOU WANT TO OFFLOAD, GET IN CONTACT WITH US AND WE WOULD LOVE TO USE IT FOR READ FOR RIGHTS!

• We has a very kind donation from Washi Gang - some pens and other miscellaneous bits and bobs that we can use for some of our workshops

• We also had a very kind donation from a lovely lady named Allison in the local area who passed on some shelving for our storage unit along with several other materials that will come in very handy for our events. ON THAT NOTE - IF YOU DO HAPPEN TO HAVE ANY SHELVING OR ORGANISATIONAL FURNITURE THAT YOU ARE NOT USING, WE WOULD LOVE TO TAKE IT!

Team spotlight

• Big shoutout to Bri! Not only did she run a fantastic stall at UWA Pride, she also came along to the Read For Rights announcement at the PrideFEST theme launch and did some awesome networking whilst there. Thank you Bri!

• 
  

  I am also going to give myself a shoutout for surviving this month…. man, it’s thrown some shit at me.

Slay Takeaways

• The clay robber frog in Amazonian Brazil is not as silent as it appears. It has been reported as screaming very loudly to put off potential predators - but as it does it in ultrasound, humans have been unable to hear it - until now…

Take care froglets,

Rachael and the Integrity Army