A solo walk covering 1500 kilometres will promote the need to support the mental health of Victoria’s emergency management community.
On 10 March 2023, Chair of the Emergency Services Foundation and Inspector-General for Emergency ManagementTony Pearce will start Tony’s Trek – a 1500km charity walk over 50 days to support pioneering initiatives for mental health to help people across Victoria’s emergency management community prevent serious mental injury
Tony’s Trek will travel through many of areas affected by Victoria’s 2019–20 Black Summer bushfires acknowledging the mental health impacts that those fires had – and continue to have – on emergency personnel and community members alike.
Tony’s Trek aims to raise awareness and support for building a collaborative sector-wide approach to preventing mental ill-health led by the Emergency Services Foundation (ESF).
Victoria’s emergency management sector includes around 139,000 paid and volunteer members in frontline and support roles devoted to helping Victorian communities before, during and after emergencies like fire, flood, storm, and pandemic.
A study by Beyond Blue has revealed this sector’s first responders and emergency service workers revealed one in three employees experience high or very high psychological distress, much higher than just over one in eight among all adults in Australia (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2015). This is reflected in escalating mental injury claims.
“We are seeing larger and longer duration emergencies affecting our communities, and it is increasingly evident that members of our emergency services community – who give so much to Victorians before during and after these emergencies – are at increasing risk of suffering a mental injury due to the type of work that they must do to keep us safe”, says Tony Pearce
Despite considerable investment in mental health treatment programs and services, there is still much work required to help prevent mental injury.
CEO Siusan MacKenzie says, “ESF seeks to get ahead of the mental harm and injury threat that currently pervades the sector – that’s why our focus is on prevention and early intervention.
“We must make sure we have the best possible supports in place to help prevent people from our sector being harmed by the work they must do to keep our community safe”, says Siusan.
Funds raised from Tony’s Trek will be used to enable ESF to deliver two pioneering - prevention-focused mental health initiatives – a Lived Experience Program and Pilot Residential Wellbeing Program.
ESF is the only organisation that is entirely dedicated to the prevention of mental health injury for Victoria’s emergency workers. It works with the support of 14 member agencies.
To find out more, donate or follow Tony’s Trek go to www.esf.com.au
