First Nations Social and Emotional Wellbeing Award
Narromine High School – Narromine High Wellbeing Hub
The Narromine High School Wellbeing Hub is an innovative, community-led approach to improving the social and emotional wellbeing of Aboriginal young people. Established through strong partnerships with Aboriginal families, Aboriginal Education Officers, students, health providers and community organisations, the Hub brings together education, health and wellbeing services within a trusted school environment.
Providing culturally safe, trauma-informed and holistic support, the Hub helps remove barriers to care while strengthening connection, belonging and early intervention. Students and families can access coordinated services including healthcare, counselling, psychology, wellbeing programs and culturally responsive support, guided by community priorities. Through genuine partnership and a focus on prevention, the Narromine High School Wellbeing Hub is creating meaningful change by supporting young people, strengthening families and building a model of care that can inspire rural communities across NSW.
Mental Health Matters Media and the Arts Award
Listen Up Music – The Songwriting Prize
The Songwriting Prize, presented by Listen Up Music, uses the power of music and storytelling to create meaningful conversations about mental health across NSW. As Australia’s largest live-performance songwriting competition dedicated to mental health, the initiative invites artists to share original songs inspired by personal experiences, recovery journeys and resilience.
Through regional finals in Sydney, Newcastle and Wagga Wagga, artists are provided with a safe platform to share not only their music, but the stories behind their songs. This approach promotes responsible storytelling, reduces stigma and helps audiences connect with mental health experiences in a more personal and relatable way.
Built on lived experience and community connection, The Songwriting Prize supports artists, strengthens peer networks and demonstrates how creativity can be a powerful tool for healing, advocacy and improving mental wellbeing.
Mental Health Matters Youth Award
i.am, delivered by New Horizons, is the first child and youth-specific suicide aftercare program co-produced with children and young people in NSW. Supporting those experiencing suicidal ideation, suicide attempts or significant self-harm, the program provides flexible, community-based care wherever young people feel safest, including at home, school or within their local community.
Central to the model are Youth Suicide Prevention Peer Workers who use their own lived experience to build trusting relationships and offer hope, while working alongside Clinical Leads to ensure safe, personalised support. Families and carers are supported throughout the recovery journey, recognising the important role they play in a young person’s wellbeing. Having supported more than 1,000 children and young people across NSW, i.am is addressing a critical gap in suicide aftercare by delivering compassionate, developmentally appropriate support that empowers young people to rebuild safety, connection and hope for the future.
Wayahead Workplace Wellbeing Award
Racing NSW – Racing Mates
Racing Mates, an essential Racing NSW initiative, has been recognised for its proactive approach to improving psychosocial safety and mental wellbeing across the NSW thoroughbred racing industry. Responding to the unique pressures faced by jockeys, trainers, stable staff, and trackwork riders, this Racing NSW initiative combines peer-led support, leadership education, and practical workplace resources to create mentally healthier environments.
Experienced industry ambassadors provide trusted, non-clinical support and connect participants with professional services, while Race Club Managers are equipped to identify psychological risks and foster supportive workplace cultures. Through key resources like the Club Support Toolkit, peer events, and targeted awareness campaigns, Racing Mates embeds mental wellbeing into everyday racing operations. By encouraging early intervention, reducing stigma, and promoting shared responsibility, the initiative helps build environments where participants feel supported, connected, and empowered to seek help.
Mental Health Matters Community Initiative Award
Tabvuma Mental Health – Mental Health Literacy Campaign
Tabvuma Mental Health’s campaign is a community-led initiative that is improving mental health literacy and reducing stigma within Black and African communities across Australia. Through culturally responsive workshops, keynote presentations, the Black Mentality Podcast, representative social media campaigns and partnerships with trusted community organisations, the initiative brings mental health education into spaces where people already feel connected and supported.
By combining lived experience, professional expertise and culturally grounded conversations, Tabvuma Mental Health is helping individuals better understand their mental wellbeing while encouraging earlier help-seeking and open dialogue. The initiative has strengthened community confidence to discuss mental health in families, faith communities, workplaces and social networks, while creating a greater sense of belonging and representation. By ensuring people do not have to choose between their culture and their wellbeing, Tabvuma Mental Health is building stronger, more connected and mentally healthier communities.
Julie Leitch Leadership through Lived Experience Award
Renee McNab is a dedicated lived-experience mental health and prisoner advocate who uses her personal experiences to drive meaningful change across the mental health and justice sectors. Through her committee involvement, community advocacy and direct support of people navigating the justice system, Renee works to ensure the voices of people with lived experience are heard in conversations about policy, practice and reform.
Renee advocates for improved mental health responses, greater access to support services in regional and rural communities, and more compassionate approaches for people experiencing vulnerability within correctional settings. She also provides practical and emotional support to individuals and families affected by the justice system, helping them feel heard and supported during challenging times.
Through her ongoing advocacy, Renee challenges stigma, highlights systemic gaps and demonstrates the power of lived experience leadership in creating more equitable and humane systems of care.
Mental Health Matters Rainbow Inclusion Award – Sponsored by ACON
Queer Family Inc. – Sprouts
Queer Family’s Sprouts program has been recognised for its innovative, community-led approach to supporting LGBTQ+ and questioning children aged 8–12 and their families.
Created in response to community feedback, Sprouts provides safe, welcoming and accessible opportunities for children to connect, build friendships and develop a sense of belonging. The program was designed to address a significant gap in support for younger LGBTQ+ children and their families, particularly within regional communities.
Led by an LGBTQ+ community-controlled organisation, Sprouts is delivered by staff with both lived experience and professional expertise in mental health, creating an environment where children and families feel understood, supported and represented. Alongside children’s activities, parents and carers can access guidance, peer connection and support around shared experiences and challenges.
Sprouts demonstrates the power of community-led initiatives in creating inclusive spaces where LGBTQ+ young people and families can thrive.
Outstanding Achievement in Mental Health Promotion Award
NSW SES Volunteers Association – Wellbeing Retreat
The NSW SES Volunteers Association has been recognised for its Wellness Retreat and Support Program, an innovative volunteer-led initiative that promotes the mental health and wellbeing of more than 10,000 NSW SES volunteers and their families across New South Wales. Developed over seven years, the 100-acre Wellness Retreat and Training Centre provides a welcoming space where volunteers can recover, reconnect and build resilience following emergency responses.
The facility includes accessible accommodation, emergency housing, training spaces and family-friendly wellbeing areas, ensuring support is available to members facing a range of personal and operational challenges. Complementing the retreat, the Association delivers Mental Health First Aid and resilience training tailored to the unique experiences of emergency service volunteers. By combining peer-led support, practical wellbeing initiatives and a strong focus on accessibility, the program is creating lasting support for the volunteers who dedicate themselves to protecting communities across NSW.
Mental Health Matters Awards 2026 Finalists
Aboriginal Social and Emotional Wellbeing Finalists
Aboriginal Mental Health, SWS LHD – Aboriginal Mental Health Transfer of Care Service
The Aboriginal Mental Health Transfer of Care (AMHTOC) team is recognised for its innovative, culturally responsive model supporting Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people experiencing acute mental health challenges. As the first dedicated service of its kind in NSW, AMHTOC provides culturally safe care, discharge planning and ongoing support to help people transition from hospital into the community.
Developed through strong Aboriginal governance and co-design with community organisations, consumers, and health services, the model recognises the importance of culture, family, community and connection in supporting social and emotional wellbeing. Through structured follow-up, collaboration with Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisations and strong partnerships with Aboriginal Liaison Officers, AMHTOC strengthens continuity of care and reduces barriers to support. The program has demonstrated improved consumer experiences, stronger community connections and a reduction in unplanned mental health readmissions.
Guyiwan Tribe – Cast for a Yarn
Cast for a Yarn is an innovative, community-led approach to strengthening mental health and wellbeing through connection, culture and fishing. Built on the belief that some of the most meaningful conversations happen while sharing time outdoors, Cast for a Yarn creates culturally safe and inclusive spaces where community members can connect, share stories and support one another.
Guided by Aboriginal cultural knowledge and the importance of connection to Country, the initiative highlights fishing as a way to strengthen relationships, share knowledge and promote social and emotional wellbeing.
Media and the Arts Finalists
This is My Brave Australia Inc. – The Great Lakes Mental Health Film Festival
The Great Lakes Mental Health Film Festival is a community-led event that uses film and storytelling to inspire conversations about mental health, reduce stigma and strengthen connection. Presented by This Is My Brave Australia, the festival brings together filmmakers, people with lived experience, mental health advocates, community organisations and audiences to explore stories of resilience, recovery, hope and human connection.
Featuring films from Australia and around the world, the festival provides a platform for authentic lived experience voices while creating opportunities for education, discussion and support through screenings, guest speakers and community conversations. With a strong focus on regional engagement, the festival helps break down barriers, increase mental health awareness and foster a more compassionate community where people feel understood, supported and encouraged to seek help when needed.
Community Flower Studio (CFS) – CFS Monthly e-Newsletter
The Community Flower Studio Monthly e-Newsletter is a community-led digital media initiative that brings together mental health awareness, creative expression and storytelling to strengthen connection and wellbeing. Established in 2020 during the COVID-19 lockdown, the newsletter was created to reduce social isolation and provide an accessible space for reflection, creativity and shared experiences.
Now with 77 issues published, the newsletter reaches approximately 250 subscribers across Australia and internationally, including community members, students, professionals and mental health advocates. Each edition explores mental health themes through lived experience stories, cultural reflections, creative writing, floral symbolism and community voices. Through its inclusive and intergenerational approach, the newsletter has become more than a communication tool, it is a living community archive that amplifies diverse perspectives, reduces stigma and creates a sense of belonging through the power of storytelling.
Mental Health Matters Youth Finalists
Narromine High School, Student RESET Program
RESET, developed by Narromine High School, is a youth-informed, whole-school emotional wellbeing framework designed to strengthen students’ ability to recognise, regulate and respond to challenging emotions. Created in response to growing mental health concerns and classroom disengagement, the program shifts the focus from reactive behaviour management to prevention, early intervention and skill development.
Through a three-tiered approach, RESET provides every student with practical self-regulation strategies, while offering additional targeted and personalised support for those requiring further assistance. Students have played an active role in shaping the program, ensuring strategies are relevant, accessible and respectful of their experiences. By embedding emotional regulation into everyday school life, RESET helps reduce stigma, improve classroom engagement and create psychologically safe learning environments. The program is equipping young people with lifelong skills that support resilience, positive mental health and stronger connections both within and beyond the classroom.
The Warrior Woman Foundation – The Young Warrior Woman Program
The Young Warrior Woman Program, delivered by the Warrior Woman Foundation, is an early intervention initiative empowering young women aged 17–25 as they transition from out-of-home care into adulthood. Recognising the significant challenges many young women face, including disrupted relationships, social isolation and increased risks to mental health and wellbeing, the program provides the trusted support and connections needed to build positive futures.
Each participant is matched with a trained Wise Warrior Woman Mentor who offers consistent encouragement, guidance and belief in their potential, while workshops build skills in wellbeing, financial literacy, education, employment and independent living. Developed with young women’s voices at its centre, the program ensures lived experience informs its design, delivery and evaluation. Through mentoring, peer connection and the Warrior Woman Alumni Network, the initiative is creating lasting communities of support where young women feel seen, heard, valued and empowered to thrive.
Wayahead Workplace Wellbeing Finalists
GIDII – Shattered – Documentary
Created by filmmaker Kathie Melocco, Shattered is an independent, community-centred documentary initiative exploring what happens after work changes a life. Filmed across Australia over three years, the four-part series examines the origins of workplace injury systems; what healing requires when care and contest collide; how financial pressure shapes recovery; and whether institutions learn from failure. It brings lived experience into conversation with clinicians, researchers, historians, workplace leaders and communities.
Through films, facilitated screenings and discussion resources, Shattered creates space for honest reflection on how workplace culture, communication and organisational responses can support recovery, or deepen harm. Rather than prescribing a single solution, it asks what we owe one another when work changes a life. By placing human connection at the centre of psychosocial safety, Shattered encourages workplaces and communities to listen, reflect and choose more compassionate responses to workplace psychological injury, and psychological harm.
Catholic Healthcare – LiveWell@CHL
LiveWell@CHL is Catholic Healthcare’s flagship workplace wellbeing program, launched in 2025 to support the mental health and wellbeing of its 5,900 employees and their families. Guided by the pillars Your Mind Matters, Your Body Matters and Your Connection Matters, the program takes a preventative, whole-of-person approach to wellbeing by improving access to support, reducing stigma and embedding mental health into everyday workplace culture.
Through its dedicated wellbeing hub, employees can easily access resources, counselling, psychological wellbeing checks and connection opportunities, alongside supports that recognise the relationship between mental, physical, financial and social wellbeing. The program also prioritises inclusion through accessible resources and culturally responsive initiatives.
Since launch, LiveWell@CHL has contributed to increased employee engagement, improved wellbeing outcomes and a stronger culture where seeking support is encouraged, normalised and valued.
Community Initiative Finalists
Your Music Inc. – Sensory Concerts
Sensory Concerts®, presented by Your Music Inc, is an initiative that uses the power of live music to improve the mental health and wellbeing of young people and families. Created in response to the barriers faced by people with anxiety, sensory sensitivities, visible and non-visible disabilities, or who are neurodivergent when accessing traditional cultural events, the program provides professional relaxed performances where audience members are free to move, vocalise, use sensory supports and engage in ways that feel comfortable for them.
Developed in partnership with families, carers, educators, allied health professionals and community organisations, Sensory Concerts® creates welcoming spaces that promote emotional regulation, social connection and a strong sense of belonging. Since its beginnings in the Blue Mountains, the initiative has expanded across metropolitan and regional communities, demonstrating how accessible arts experiences can reduce social isolation and help young people build confidence while experiencing the wellbeing that music can bring.
Arts in Recovery Hunter – Arts in Recovery Newcastle
Arts in Recovery Newcastle has been recognised for its initiative that uses creativity to improve mental health, strengthen social connection and celebrate recovery. Through free monthly art workshops and the annual BOUNCEBACK exhibition, the program provides a welcoming space where people living with mental health challenges and their carers can connect, develop new skills and express themselves through art.
Participants play an active role in shaping the program, with many volunteering, mentoring others and helping deliver exhibitions that showcase their achievements to the wider community. By removing financial, clinical, cultural and accessibility barriers, the initiative has created opportunities for people from diverse backgrounds to build friendships, reduce isolation and develop confidence in a supportive environment. For more than 15 years, Arts in Recovery Newcastle has demonstrated the power of creativity to foster belonging, challenge stigma and strengthen community wellbeing through meaningful connection.
Julie Leitch Leadership through Lived Experience Finalists
Ellie Worthington – Murrumbidgee Local Health District
Ellie Worthington is a Farmgate Counsellor with the Murrumbidgee Local Health District and a powerful advocate for improving mental health outcomes in rural farming communities. Drawing on her lived experience of mental ill health, her farming background and professional expertise, Ellie provides support in places where farmers feel most comfortable, from the kitchen table to the paddock fence.
Through the Farmgate Support Program, Ellie has helped break down stigma, build trust and encourage help-seeking among people who may otherwise avoid traditional mental health services. Her unique ability to understand both the realities of farming life and the challenges of navigating mental health allows her to create genuine connections with individuals and families during some of their most difficult moments. Ellie’s leadership demonstrates the impact of lived experience in creating more accessible, compassionate and community-centred mental health support.
Hallie Clute – Waves of Wellness
Hallie Clute is an exceptional lived experience leader using her own experience of PTSD to advance research, advocacy and access to innovative mental health care. As a volunteer with Waves of Wellness, Hallie supports veterans, first responders and people experiencing trauma through surf therapy, creating safe and empowering spaces for recovery.
Beyond frontline support, Hallie is helping build the evidence base behind surf therapy by exploring the neuroscience and therapeutic mechanisms that contribute to improved wellbeing. Through research, international presentations and community advocacy, she is demonstrating that lived experience is a vital form of expertise that can strengthen mental health systems. Hallie’s leadership continues to challenge stigma, promote hope and ensure that people with lived experience are recognised as essential contributors to the design and delivery of effective mental health support.
Rainbow Inclusion Finalists
headspace Edmondson Park – Mosaic
headspace Edmondson Park’s Mosaic program recognises a youth-led approach to supporting LGBTQIA+ young people through connection, inclusion and belonging. Developed in partnership with the headspace Youth Reference Group, Mosaic was created in response to community need for a safe and welcoming space where LGBTQIA+ young people could connect with peers, express themselves and feel accepted.
Mosaic incorporates inclusive practices, youth-led activities and a strong focus on psychological safety. The program is particularly significant within a multicultural community where some young people may experience additional barriers to acceptance and support. Through representation, peer connection and community building, Mosaic helps provide a supportive environment where participants can build friendships, celebrate identity and access meaningful social connection.
Trans and Gender Diverse Kids Australia – Gender Neutral Period Packs for Trans Masc Teens
Gender Neutral Period Packs for Trans Masculine Teens is an affirming initiative designed to support trans masculine and gender-diverse young people who experience distress, stigma and financial barriers when accessing menstrual care.
The project provides free period packs containing essential products and inclusive resources that acknowledge the unique experiences of menstruation while living as a boy or masculine-identifying person.
Developed through lived experience and community leadership, the packs are assembled by trans masculine volunteers and shaped by ongoing feedback from the community to ensure they are practical, respectful and relevant. Through partnerships with LGBTQIA+ organisations, schools and youth services, the program helps reduce period poverty, strengthen dignity and promote positive mental health by creating a sense of belonging and reinforcing that trans and gender-diverse young people are valued, respected and supported.
Outstanding Achievement in Mental Health Promotion Finalists
SWSLHD Health Promotion – Mental Health and Wellbeing Team, Tackling the Challenge (TTC): Men’s Stories of resilience and Recovery in South West Sydney
Tackling the Challenge: Men’s Stories of Resilience and Recovery is a mental health promotion initiative delivered through a partnership between South Western Sydney Local Health District and Western Sydney University. Responding to the unique barriers many men face in seeking support, the program uses lived experience storytelling to challenge stigma, promote healthier expressions of masculinity and encourage help-seeking.
Men with lived experience share their stories through photography, exhibitions, community events and digital platforms, creating meaningful opportunities for reflection, connection and community dialogue. Developed through a co-design approach with storytellers, researchers and community partners, the initiative has strengthened mental health literacy, increased confidence among participants and improved community capacity to recognise and respond to men experiencing distress. By placing lived experience at its heart, Tackling the Challenge demonstrates how storytelling can inspire hope, foster connection and create lasting change for individuals and communities alike.
Hello Sunday Morning – Daybreak
Hello Sunday Morning’s Daybreak is Australia’s largest digital peer support community, providing free, anonymous and evidence-based support for people who want to change their relationship with alcohol and improve their mental wellbeing.
As part of Hello Sunday Morning’s stepped care model, the program combines lived experience peer support, behaviour change tools, evidence based resources and personalised guidance from qualified Care Navigators to help people access support whenever and wherever they need it. Designed to reduce barriers such as stigma, cost, privacy concerns and geographic isolation, Daybreak has supported more than 174,000 members, including many women and people living in regional communities. By creating a safe, non-judgemental environment that encourages early help-seeking, the program has demonstrated significant improvements in mental wellbeing while reducing alcohol-related harm. Daybreak continues to show how accessible digital support can foster hope, connection and lasting positive change for individuals and communities.
