One in four young people have a family member living with mental health challenges. In these often informal carer roles they take on, it’s common for them to fly under the radar of traditional support systems.
Through their programs, learning pathways, and creative projects, Satellite Foundation creates safe and brave spaces for children and young people in this position to reflect and connect through creative expression.
We spoke to Rose and Kelly to learn more about how creativity and storytelling can create systemic change.
Rose Cuff, Co-founder and CEO at Satellite Foundation
Kelly Lai, Director of Creativity, Growth and Development at Satellite Foundation
Hayley Tasker, Senior Strategic Designer at Today
What does Satellite do?
Rose: Satellite Foundation is a not-for-profit that connects and empowers children and young people who have a family member living with mental health challenges. We help amplify their voices and share their lived and living experiences of mental health through the extraordinary power of creative expression and meaningful connections.
We work in community and we work with a broad definition of mental health—we don't define it, we don't box people into a diagnosis. We recognise people experience co-existing challenges like addiction and family violence. We are strengths-based, we recognise that while children and young people who come into the Satellite orbit are managing challenges, they are also incredibly strong, talented and excited about the future.
Kelly: We approach our support and services from a creative expression perspective. Helping young people tell their stories or reflect on their experiences through creative means. Not using art as craft—which there is some of that when they're a bit younger—but as we work with participants as they move into teenage and young adult years, it’s using art as a way to tell their stories, in ways that the public can also experience and understand.
Where did it all begin?
Rose: In my occupational therapy training, I did more than weave bunny rabbits and make baskets. I very quickly got really moved by the whole discussion on the stigma around mental health. This was back in the seventies, I was just gobsmacked. I couldn't believe how even in the training there wasn't a proper focus on it. I made a sort of inner resolve then to fight it. I had some personal experiences of somebody close to me living with schizophrenia. So that's what started it really, the idea that you're not damaged, you're not broken, you're not to be hidden away, but you should be seen and you have the same rights as everybody else if you have a mental illness.
How do young people find your programs?
Kelly: Children and young people who are part of a family experiencing mental health challenges don’t always identify with having supporting or caring roles. So the idea is the more those stories and experiences are out in public and the more you hear it and see it, then you can reflect on your own experiences and see that there are support and services out there to help you as well.
Rose: If a young person goes with somebody from their family to a mental health service, they often won't get asked, “How are you going? What's happening for you?” I began to recognise just how alone and isolated children and young people can feel, their experiences are sort of invisible, like an under-the radar population.
What we are trying to do is change that. We work with mental health services to encourage them to tune into them, to check in with young people if they see them around another family member. We want to make it known that this is an experience that many, many thousands of young people have. The numbers are big. One in four young people have a family member living with mental health challenges.
Kelly: We have a great outreach and engagement team that work with schools, youth organisations and mental health organisations, and we do a lot of outreach and engagement work through connecting within the systems. We’re also starting to use social media as an outreach tool to get our message out.
Why do you do what you do? What drives you to do this work?
Rose: It's just a belief I have in the possibility of change and transformation. I hold so many stories of young people and parents and families that I've met over the years where it's about changing the narrative. They have a story, but it’s not their whole identity, they're not confined to that experience, we can open other possibilities.
And, I get angry, it’s a good drive. I get so incensed about the way people still view and talk about mental health and all around that—the stigma and discrimination. We need to do whatever we can to change that narrative and change the systemic beliefs, it is possible.
Every day I either hear something from someone on the team, or a young person, or I look back at photos, and I think “This is why we do what we do.” We're not there yet. We've still got lots to do.
I think one of the worst things any human can feel is being alone in their experience, “I'm the only one that feels this, or that's got this story.” I want them to know they’re not alone.
Kelly: It’s two things for me. Firstly, the power of creativity; the power of arts to tell a story that's really meaningful and challenge preconceived notions and stigma. I think there's so much potential in that, especially coming from young people.
The other aspect is that the story of mental health can mean many things to many people. I come from a Chinese minority background where you don't talk about mental health, you don't talk about feelings at all. Not all families of course, and I think as a society, we’re getting better at it but I think a lot of cultural minority families may relate to that experience of not talking about it.
So the opportunity to work in that space and to spark ideas for conversations in minority cultural groups is very meaningful to me. How do we talk about mental health in a way that isn't clinical, that isn't a diagnosis, but in a way that talks about wellbeing and expression and just listening to the stories that's around you.
So the opportunity to work in that space and to spark ideas for conversations in minority cultural groups is very meaningful to me. How do we talk about mental health in a way that isn't clinical, that isn't a diagnosis, but in a way that talks about wellbeing and expression and just listening to the stories that's around you.
I think one of the worst things any human can feel is being alone in their experience, “I'm the only one that feels this, or that's got this story.” I want them to know they’re not alone.
Rose Cuff
What programs do you run at Satellite?
Rose: We collectively co-create and provide spaces for brave and inclusive conversations. We facilitate this in a range of ways, so people can come together and share what they maybe have never shared before and in a way that they feel good about sharing.
Kelly: We have core programs that range from overnight camps, online, or in-person workshops that we offer specifically to children and young people with family mental health challenges. We have learning and development pathways, where we provide our past participants with different vocational pathways. And then we have projects around creativity and innovation. Including internal research projects around what it means to be someone using supports and services like ours or more specific research questions with creative focuses that are more exploratory and experimental than our core programs. We currently have two amazing creative projects underway—a zine project called “All the Coloured Glasses” and a short film project called “That’s Mental” all about co-creating with young people.
Across all our offerings we make sure we are doing all we can to create safe spaces for the children and young people that come into our orbit. Our approach with facilitation is to ensure that we do so in a way that considers mental health, lived experience, and creativity.
Rose: We also have a Youth Advisory Council that is around two years old. We were hearing from young people that they found it really helpful to be able to stay connected and continue their journey with us. It’s still in the growing phase but currently we have 15 young people who are paid to meet and work with us. It's mutually beneficial.
Kelly: We are currently working on how we can best work together with our Youth Advisory Council and exploring opportunities to make sure their contribution is having an impact in the ways that they envision.
We’ve recently been working together on a creative co-creation project. Why is taking that approach with young people important?
Kelly: It’s important to us that we are not creating stuff for young people without their input. We want how we show up in the community to actually resonate and actually engage the people that it’s for. It's about understanding what it is that they are seeking or what it is that they're wanting.
Rose: Nothing about us without us. It’s a lived experience mantra, which I think speaks to what we are aiming for.
What's your dream opportunity for creating positive impact in the world?
Rose: I think it's always been my dream that there wouldn't be a single person in the world—but let's just say Victoria for now—who would be judged for experiencing mental health challenges. I want everyone to be able to sit in spaces with knowledge and compassion.
If that came about through creative means, it would be fantastic. Perhaps there could be a public campaign that addressed the innate creativity in all of us and how when we tell stories through creativity, people understand it at a deeper level. That would make me very happy.
Kelly: I think it'd be really interesting to explore what the future of mental health might look like from the perspective of children and young people. As adults and in the workforce, we have such ingrained ways of thinking about what something could look like. But what if we look at it from a young person's lens—without any constraints or conceived notion about what works and what doesn’t work—what could it look like? What would those futures be? I think that would be an interesting place to explore.
Rose: Adding onto that, I think we are very reactive as a society, health sectors are very reactive. If there was some way of introducing these ideas in creative ways with younger children from a kindergarten or primary school level, it could change the thinking about wellbeing and our relationships with mental health from the very beginning.
I think it's always been my dream that there wouldn't be a single person in the world—but let's just say Victoria for now—who would be judged for experiencing mental health challenges. I want everyone to be able to sit in spaces with knowledge and compassion.
Rose Cuff
With both of those examples, what needs to change for us to start thinking in that way?
Kelly: The boring answer is the money flow. In terms of funding, the ways funders like to measure impact is different from the way we want to measure impact. We are better now at looking at qualitative measures alongside quantitative ones, but the ‘read between the line’ moments always come back to centering those quantitative measures when having to justify receiving funding. We hear our participants tell us their stories of transformation and meaning making, we can see the positive effects of our programs and offerings on our participants, “Look at how happy and able these young people are to have conversations about mental health.” But how do we quantify that with scarce resources, and in all the different ways to satisfy different stakeholders with different expectations? That requires a lot of long-term investment, setting up systems to support measurement amidst delivery—usually a luxury that a lot of not-for-profits don’t have. I think that approach to measurement needs to change.
What's next for Satellite? How can people help Satellite grow the impact that you have for young people?
Rose: Money. As Kelly said, the funding models are not always ideal.
We're seeking continuation of funding from the state government—that's our big focus at the moment. At the same time, we’re looking for opportunities to diversify our income; applying for grants, sponsorships, experimenting with income generating projects, anything that brings money in really.
We are also starting to think more about how we can bring volunteers in because the young people often talk about the positive experience they've had and they want other people to have the same positive experience that they did.
Kelly: We’re exploring different partnership models with corporates and for-profit organisations, exploring how we can join forces to tell that story of mental health and creativity. How do we spread the word that creative expression is amazing for individuals’ mental health and wellbeing?
We have some great ways for for-profit organisations to be involved. Not just direct donations to our flagship programs—which would be amazing—but ways to support our creative endeavours like the zines and short films we're doing. Opportunities to support young people to tell their story in the way that they want to tell it.
We would love to share these works with the world as broadly as we can. We're not an events company, we're not a screening company, we're not a PR company. So we’re looking for organisations with very special skills to help partner, cross promote and work together to create amazing things for our society.
What is Satellite's point of difference?
Kelly: The fact that we bring together mental health in a non-clinical way, creativity and the lived experience of young people in everything that we do.
Rose: Yes. We are what we call a light touch program, so we don't require the family member to be clinically diagnosed with a mental illness but work holistically across the spectrum of mental health. We're non-clinical, and we are the only organisation in Australia that has that specific focus on young people with caring roles and responsibilities for a family member with mental health challenges.
Kelly: We spend a lot of time and energy thinking about how we keep children and young people connected with us as they grow and transform through the different life stages. Authentic relationships and moments of care and connection available when it’s needed.
Poor mental health isn't always permanent, it isn't constant, it's episodic. So how do we as an organisation be sustainable but also be available when those moments come? We don’t want to be just waiting for when something bad happens, we're there for the good times and the bad times and we want to always be a safe space young people can connect with.
We don’t want to be just waiting for when something bad happens, we're there for the good times and the bad times and we want to always be a safe space young people can connect with.
Kelly Lai
