Our Impact
Our Journey
We began with a few honest conversations: people connecting over a shared experience. Practitioners, advocates and professionals from diverse cultural backgrounds came together and recognised something important: creating a more culturally responsive mental health system is something we can do better together.
Over five years of monthly network meetings, peer supervision, community events and strong partnerships, we’ve built something meaningful:
- We’ve defined our guiding principles and deepened our understanding of the experiences facing multicultural communities in the mental health system
- We continue to explore our own identities as culturally diverse and intersectional practitioners
- We’ve grown ideas into action – group agreements, a draft white paper, a toolkit, HeartChat, and community and cultural events, including Dumplings Against Depression, which continues to grow each year
- Most importantly, we’ve built a community of over 130 people and organisations who show up for one another – and for the sector
We named our network Solis because we are the opposite of silos and because this work, at its best, feels like solace.
Everything we’ve built has brought us to where we are today, and we’re just getting started.
Dumplings Against Depression
Our annual ‘Dumplings Against Depression’ events bring community members and mental health peers and practitioners together to normalise conversations about mental health, reduce stigma around seeking support and share knowledge across the sector.
Cultural Diversity: Read the Label.
Labels like culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD), non-English speaking background (NESB) and person of colour (POC) are commonly used across the mental health and social impact sectors and can serve a practical purpose, but they also carry weight. They can amplify experiences of othering, marginalisation and identity dilution.
We hosted a community forum in 2023 to explore how these labels are understood and experienced by our diverse communities.
