About us

The best place to receive mental health care is where you are right now. The foundations of good mental health come from our community. It comes from having a sense of belonging among your friends and family, from having a stable home environment, nourishing food to eat, and affordable living costs.
 
In the ACT, the bulk of government funding is funneled to acute hospital-based care. Think sirens, waiting rooms, the discomfort of sleeping in a hospital bed, and the potential trauma associated with being at a crisis point. This is a missed opportunity.
 

Acute hospital care is of course, a vital part of the mental health system. But wherever possible, we want to avoid hospitalising people.


Each person who is hospitalised is a person who has reached a crisis point in their lives. Their condition will have escalated, often unnecessarily, because they didn’t get help when they first needed it. 
We imagine a mental health system that is less costly – both in dollar amounts, and to the wellbeing of Canberrans. The Mental Health Community Coalition ACT advocates for prevention, early intervention, and recovery. The community is the perfect place to deliver holistic, recovery-focused, person-centred, and human rights-informed care.

 

We want to make sure that the community organisations that deliver this care are adequately funded, accessible, and easy to navigate to benefit every Canberran.

 

We advance this aim through our work in mental health policy and advocacy, workforce training, sector coordination, and initiatives to promote the critical role of community services in facilitating recovery and enhancing wellbeing.

 

We are a not-for-profit organisation funded by the ACT Government. We work closely with Carers ACT and the ACT Mental Health Consumer Network to ensure our work is informed by the needs of consumers and carers.

 

We are accredited at Certificate Level of the Australian Service Excellence Standards (ASES). We are a Quality Innovation Performance accredited organisation. We are registered as a charity with the Australian Charities and Not-for-profits Commission.

Annual Reports

Read more about our impact, projects and collective advocacy.

Our history

MHCC ACT was established as a peak body for the community-managed mental health sector in the ACT in 2004.

Happy holidays!

We will be closed from 4pm on 20 December 2024 and will reopen on 6 January 2025.

We wish you a relaxing and joyful holiday season.