Our vision is of a society in which mental illness will be understood and accepted.
People with mental illness will be afforded the same regard as
those with physical illness and resources will be available to offer
early interventions and state of the art treatment and support.
These interventions will be so effective that long-term negative
consequences of mental illness will have disappeared for the person
and their family.
People with mental illness will no
longer experience stigma and
society will treat them with the same
respect and dignity as any other
person and welcome and include
them fully as community members.
Our Values
We value the contributions of people with mental illness, their families
and friends in our organisation and the community. The following values
underpin all our activities:
Honesty
Honesty is integral to all our dealings with members, volunteers,
clients, staff and the community. In relationships with people seeking
support and advice we will be open, truthful, genuine and respectful.
Staff will reflect on their own practice and develop new insights from
that process. There will be appropriate use of our resources to support
the mission of Mental Illness Fellowship and this will be accurately
documented and recorded. There will also be a process to deal with
potential conflicts of interest.
Acceptance
Acceptance means that we include and accept people with mental
illness and we value difference. Our relationships are interactive and
based on non-judgmental attitudes. We welcome people into our
organization who have limited support options and who may have
experienced difficulties within the mental health system. We trust that
people can be well and must not be defined by their symptoms and we
work to support that belief. We encourage healthy coping strategies
that enhance the capacities of people with mental illness.
Equity
Equity means that we work to ensure mental health services are
accessible and that people receive their entitlements. It also means
that people with mental illness, and their families and friends from
diverse cultural backgrounds and creeds have the same right to respect
and dignified treatment as any other person. We identify service gaps,
injustice and poor practice, which affect interventions, and we work with
people to find solutions and strategies to address these difficulties.
Flexibility
Flexibility means that we are able and willing to adjust to individuality.
We welcome diversity and use it for the benefit of the individual, the
community and our organization. It means we try to find creative
solutions to overcome problems and ensure that these solutions are
open to scrutiny and fit within our total value system. We acknowledge
the challenges flexibility brings and use these challenges to enrich all
our activities
Commitment
Commitment means we work towards the achievement of our vision
and purpose. We expect our members, volunteers and staff to commit
to these values and implement and promulgate them in all areas of
our organization. All our activities ensure effective and efficient use
of resources and we strive for excellence in all we do.
Participation
Participation means that we will fully and happily engage in positive
developments for people with mental illness, their families and their
friends. We are a grass roots organization and encourage involvement
in voluntary activity. We encourage staff to be members and to
actively participate in achieving our goals. We encourage active
membership, which is designed to strengthen the mental health voice and influence mental health development and policy. It also
means co-operation within the membership, volunteers, staff
and with a range of community agencies.
