What can Carer Connect do to help you?

Carer Connect is a service provided in the greater Brisbane area for family and friends who care for someone who has a mental health issue. Our role is to help and support you to look after yourself as well as the person you care for.

Support provided thorough Carer Connect is as flexible as possible - we try to do whatever we can to help you in your caring role. If your needs are outside the scope of our service, we can help you find a service with those skills.

Some ways we have assisted carers are:

• Helping people develop plans and strategies to sort out some of their issues and we stood beside them to help them achieve this plan.

• Helping people find services to help them with housework, employment, legal advice, financial issues, respite and holidays. There really are quite a few services out there and we can help you to access them.

• Accompanying  people to courts and tribunals. We don’t have legal skills but we can be there to offer you support.

• Providing information packages and we can help you find other information you need.

• Helping people navigate through Government services like Centrelink, Department of Housing, Guardian and Administration Tribunal and Mental Health Tribunals.   It often helps if Arafmi is behind you.

• Helping you to access Arafmi’s other services such as 24 hour phone line, face to face counselling, respite services, library and resources, support groups, training and workshops.

• Listening to people. Many people find it useful just to have someone who has some experience with mental illness to talk with. Sometimes it is difficult to discuss some of the things that happen with friends and family, with people in the community.