MIFWA - supporting mental wellness and recovery

31/05/2026

🌟 Family and Carer Peer Worker Opportunity 🌟

Do you have lived experience supporting a young family member experiencing emerging mental health challenges?

We are seeking someone who is compassionate and passionate to join our team as part of the Medicare Mental Health Head to Health Kids Hub.

⭐️ A first-of-its-kind service in WA
📍Location: Parkerville Office, Midland
🕒 Hours: 12 hours per week (days and times negotiable)
📅 Contract: Fixed-term, 2-year contract
💼 Classification: SCHADS Level 3.1

This role is an opportunity to use your lived experience to support children and families while helping shape a groundbreaking service in Western Australia.

Closing date Sunday 7 June 2026.

Learn more and apply here: https://au.seek.com/job/92413282

31/05/2026

The impact of Hospital to Home ending is being felt deeply across our workforce too.

The program is unique in WA because every role within the program is a designated lived experience role. Our peer workers bring highly specialised skills, compassion, and understanding to supporting people through discharge, distress, reconnection and recovery.

They know firsthand how difficult it can be to navigate the mental health system or find support after leaving hospital. They understand how vulnerable and isolated people can feel during this time.

Despite the uncertainty they are facing personally, our peer workers continue to show up each day with compassion, professionalism and care for participants.

This work matters. These workers matter. And the people relying on this support matter too.

Please support our petition so we can urge the government to provide emergency funding to help keep the program open. Sign our petition, share the link, and write to ministers and departments: https://bit.ly/MIFWA-Petition

30/05/2026

The news that the Hospital to Home program is being allowed to end is not only incredibly difficult for our team, it is also deeply concerning for the hospital partners who have worked alongside us over the past 8 years.

These amazing workers have been there to support hundreds of people through safer transitions from hospital to community care.

They've seen the program become a vital part of recovery pathways allowing people to be supported through vulnerability, distress, isolation, and reconnection after discharge.

They tell us this program works.

They tell us the difference it makes.

And they tell us the impact its loss will have on the patients who will need this support during one of the most critical times in their recovery journeys.

Here's what one had to say:

"May we emphasise how important the program has been in maintaining our patients in the community and successfully guiding them back into community life. This has resulted in a diminished need for rapid readmission to our inpatient service. The program has also been complementary to other community services such as our public community adult mental health services and Headspace."

Please support our petition so we can urge the government to provide emergency funding to help keep the program open. Sign our petition, share the link, and write to ministers and departments: https://bit.ly/MIFWA-Petition

29/05/2026

It’s hard to understand how such a valuable peer support program can be defunded despite strong evidence that it works.

Recovery does not end at discharge. When someone is being discharged from hospital following a serious decline in mental health, the peer support, connection, and continuity of care they receive can make all the difference and help prevent readmission.

So as the team providing this support for almost 10 years, we know the Hospital to Home program works. We know it changes lives. We know people need it.

Right now, there is nothing else like it in WA, so why close it when it should be in more hospitals?

We're calling on State and Commonwealth governments to act to ensure this vital program stays open.

Please support us by signing our petition, sharing the link, and writing to ministers and departments: https://bit.ly/MIFWA-Petition

28/05/2026

Another social work team deeply concerned about patients being discharged without the support they need to recover safely and avoid readmission.

Hospital to Home has played a vital role in helping people after discharge — from attending follow-up appointments and accessing medication, to connecting with community support and simply having a trusted person during a stressful time.

Without funding, we will be forced to close the program.

Its loss will leave a significant gap, with no equivalent alternative available.

Let's urge the government to provide emergency funds to keep it open.

✅ Sign the petition https://bit.ly/H2H-Petition
✅ Write to the ministers⁠ and departments
✅ Share this post

27/05/2026

Today marks the first day of National Reconciliation Week (27 May – 3 June). This year’s theme, ‘All In’, encourages all Australians to commit to reconciliation every day.

At MIFWA, we're all in.

We're committed to reconciliation through respect, relationships, and meaningful action. We recognise the enduring strength, knowledge, and leadership of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, and we are committed to embedding these principles across our organisation and the services we deliver to the community.

A key step in this journey has been our Reflect Reconciliation Action Plan (RAP), which guides how we strengthen cultural understanding and partnerships across our organisation and community services.

Read more about our journey: https://bit.ly/MIFWA-Reconciliation

Reconciliation WA

At MIFWA, our commitment to reconciliation is grounded in respect, relationship, and meaningful action. We recognise the enduring strength, knowledge, and

27/05/2026

More messages from social workers strongly advocating for Hospital to Home to be protected:

"The ability for consumers to engage with someone who has navigated their own recovery journey often provides a level of understanding and relatability that cannot be replicated through traditional clinical interventions alone.

We strongly advocate for the continuation and preservation of this essential service and ask that serious consideration be given to the long-term value and positive outcomes the peer program provides to consumers, families, staff, and the wider community."

Let's all advocate for keeping the program open. Sign the petition: https://www.change.org/MIFWA-H2H-Program

26/05/2026

WA’s hospital system is under sustained pressure, so we can’t claim to be serious about reducing readmissions and supporting recovery but then shrug when a proven discharge support program is forced to pause because two levels of government haven’t finalised who holds the cheque book.

When a program is working, the public expects governments to resolve responsibility quickly — not let service continuity become the casualty of administrative drift.

The call is simple:

Fund the bridge.
Keep the doors open.
Don’t discharge people into a funding gap.

Let's urge the government to provide emergency funds to keep the program open so people get the support they need. Sign and share the petition: change.org/MIFWA-H2H-Program

25/05/2026

The days and weeks after discharge from an acute mental health unit are widely recognised as a high-risk period for su***de and hospital readmission. That’s when the structure of inpatient care disappears overnight, when follow-up appointments can be hard to secure, when isolation returns, and when the practical realities of life — housing, medication, transport, groceries — come crashing back in.

For nine years, the Hospital to Home program has helped keep people steady and is doing it well.

It isn’t just “service contact.” It provides practical support, peer connection, hope, confidence, and stability at the exact moment people need it most.

And it works. The results and feedback speak for themselves.

We can’t believe we have to fight to save a program that is clearly making a difference! Programs like this should exist in every hospital across Australia.

Let's urge the government to provide emergency funds to keep Hospital to Home open.

Sign the petition, the clock is ticking bit.ly/MIFWA-Petition

24/05/2026

A support service for patients leaving mental health wards in Perth is facing imminent closure, after the Commonwealth government said it would not renew funding for the service.

The Hospital to Home program run by not-for-profit organisation Mental Illness Fellowship of WA (MIFWA) has been operating since 2017. It pairs patients with peer support workers with lived experience of mental illness.

“Hospital to Home is supporting people that are being discharged from a mental health ward and transitioning back home,” Samanatha Scott from MIFWA told Nadia Mitsopoulos on ABC Radio Perth Mornings.

“People might have lots of worries about returning home. Having somebody that has a lived experience who really understands can be really important.

The Peer support workers can check-in with patients, help them with appointments, and talk through challenges.

“Actually having someone sit with you and really listen in a non-judgmental space actually makes all the difference in the world.”

The program costs $750,000 a year to run and in the last 12 months has supported 215 participants.

The program was founded after statistics showed that patients were at higher risk of su***de and readmission in the two months after discharge from hospital.

The initial pilot program 2017 was funded by the WA state government, before the Commonwealth took over.

This year the Commonwealth government have said they won’t continue to fund the service after June 30 and the state government has also declined to take over funding the service.

MIFWA has launched a petition to try and get either government to change their minds and reinstate funding, but in the meantime, they’ve had to start turning referrals away, with the service set to end in five weeks.

“Because it's an eight-week program we've had to close off referrals so that our existing people know that their supports are coming to an end,” Ms Scott said.

“This is also a workforce that has been told they can't do this anymore, it's pretty devastating.”

She said hospital medical staff have also expressed concern that the Hospital to Home program may close.

“When you think it's such a critical time for people, that extra support is really important and there is no equivalent.”