Thursday 20 November 2025 | 13:30-15:30 

Format: Presentation

Stream: People

Part One: Promoting sexual safety in mental health services

The Australian Mental Health and Suicide Prevention Senior Officers Safety and Quality Group has identified sexual safety as a priority. Mental health consumers and their families and kin have a right to be safe from coercion, sexual harassment, assault and behaviour that is unwanted or makes them uncomfortable. Unfortunately, consumers, carers and service providers report that some consumers do not feel sexually safe, staff are not always confident in best practice in promoting sexual safety, consumers and families and kin do not always have information about how to report sexual safety concerns and incidents go under-reported. In this session we will present what is being done to promote a nationally consistent approach to prioritising and addressing this important issue in different Australian jurisdictions including WA, SA, Victoria and New South Wales.

Sophie Davison  Australian Government Department of Health, Disability and Ageing; Australia
Peter Heggie Lived Experience Carer Family and Kin Representative; Australia

Part Two: Is The Consumer Voice an Untapped Superpower For Detecting Paediatric Deterioration? Learnings From The VICTOR Pilot

When children suffer preventable harm within hospitals, a repeated theme is that parents and carers have tried to escalate their concerns - but were not heard.Track and trigger tools, such as the Victorian Children's Tool for Observation and Response (ViCTOR), designed to detect paediatric deterioration are widely used nationally and internationally with some success. However, is there a revolutionary way to rethink our approach to addressing paediatric deterioration? Recent work has shown that parent/carer concern is a more powerful indicator than vital signs in predicting paediatric deterioration. Join Safer Care Victoria, Victoria’s healthcare safety and improvement experts for an engaging presentation on initial findings on using parent/carer concern as a vital sign and the next steps for this important work.

Fiona Nemeh Safer Care Victoria; Australia
Erin Mills Safer Care Victoria; Australia

Part Three: Are ICU Patients Thriving? Co-Designed Peer Support After Intensive Care

The Royal Adelaide Hospital ICU initiated Survive and Thrive as a collaborative service to support engagement, connection and ongoing care after individuals and families experience long stays in ICU.Survive and Thrive is a voluntary, community-based group that creates partnerships, bringing consumers together with ICU medical, nursing and allied health staff. All ICU long-stay patients and their caregivers, and others deemed at risk of post intensive care syndrome (PICS), are invited to attend peer-support sessions. Patients and caregivers connect with healthcare and community resources in a safe setting where they can build relationships with others who share similar experiences.Co-presented by the Survive and Thrive Navigator and one of our consumer representatives we would share how our peer support group was developed, how it runs and the learnings.The program fosters collaboration and partnerships between patients, families, staff, consumer representatives, community services and primary care to support wellbeing and recovery.

Simone Dafoe Royal Adelaide Hospital; Australia

Part Four: The BiRCH Clinic: a story of creating a new program (caring for a previously unserved population) using only existing resources

Cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death in women. It has been said that “pregnancy is a stress test” and that the perinatal period provides a unique opportunity to identify an individual’s risk and commence interventions to preserve health and reduce life-long risk. The Birth Related Cardiovascular Health (BiRCH) Clinic is a multidisciplinary postpartum cardiovascular prevention clinic in the Campbell River Hospital (on Vancouver Island Canada - the traditional territories of the Ligwilda'xw people.)
By partnering with existing Chronic Disease Management programs this small project is gaining strength and experience (and data!) caring for individuals and their babies at 6-months post-birth.
Don't give up when you hear "not funded" ... dream about how to keep fun alive by using what you have on hand! Hear our story and consider how YOUR existing programs might gestate and "give birth" to something new for an underserved population.

Jennifer Kask North Island Hospital Campbell River; Canada