Dear Ms Jackson,

We would like to extend our sincere thanks for your keynote address and panel contributions at our Rosalie Rendu Forum. You have pioneered lived experience leadership, and reinforced how critical it is when creating better solutions for future generations.
Many audience members stated that your keynote speech was the highlight of their evening, inspiring a renewed commitment to do more in their communities to support individuals facing mental health concerns and/or poverty.
Thank you also for offering your time to talk with and support two of our other panellists prior to the event. Both panellists stated how beneficial this was in preparing for the night.

“Fay Jackson has been a Keynote Speaker at a number of our conferences and we can’t recommend her highly enough. She continues to receive standing ovations for her unique angle on mental health, presented with both captivating stories and serious strategies for working with people affected by mental health. A key strength is her ability to relate the subject matter to any number of different audiences making it both interesting and importantly, relevant.
Feedback from our delegates always has Fay at the top of the list of preferred speakers and we will continue to both use and recommend Fay on a regular basis.”

Dear Fay, It was a real honour to have you as our guest speaker at our recent staff forum Refresh, Renew, Reframe. Your performance was nothing short of brilliant and all present found you to be extraordinarily knowledgeable, funny and entertaining.
I sincerely want to thank you on behalf of the Registrar and our QUT Managers and staff who attended your workshop and keynote presentations.

I consider us extremely fortunate to have been able to have you visit given your busy schedule. To be able to hear the stories, insights and experience you offered was such a leap for us in this program area. It was such an important opportunity for our University to gain better understanding of the challenges of living and working with a mental health condition.

You helped us all challenge existing biases, beliefs and misconceptions and encouraged us all to be more supportive for anyone who may be living with a mental health condition.

You truly are a very special person.
Warmest regards

Dear Fay,
It has been a month since you finished training the Welfare Team at East Hills Girls THS in Youth Mental Health First Aid.
The immediate feedback was so positive with highly accomplished staff saying it was the best training they had ever done. Your willingness and ability to weave personal experience into theoretical discussions brought a very necessary humanity and humour to the subject of Mental Health.
The noticeable effect a month on is that staff are dealing with young people in need with confidence and compassion.
Thank you again for your energy, humour and wisdom. I have done this training before and it was very different with you and I would welcome you back anytime.

“Fay visited Alice Springs in mid-June 2008 as Guest Speaker for a public forum to help raise community awareness around mental illness. With a wide array of personal (and often colourful!) stories, Fay’s passion and dedication to helping destigmatise mental illness shone through. Her presentation was rich with information, warm, humourous and highly engaging, and all who attended greatly appreciated the insights and wisdom she shared. Thanks Fay. It was wonderful to meet you. Fay also delivered 2 workshops -‘Supporting Health Workers’ and ‘Young People and Mental Illness.’ Both workshops were well attended and left people wanting to more.”

“The way Fay presents the Mental Health Awareness training material is so unique. I have never experienced such an inspiring, down to earth and memorable educational programme before.”

“Fay your work with us at the Downer Engineering conference added value to our organisation through a greater awareness of the effects of mental illness in the workplace and gave a lot for our senior management team to consider. Your ability to articulate and deliver the message is second to none.”

“I hope that your inspiration encourages many in your audiences to do what they can to help control this most serious problem in our communities and be interventionist and not passive until a tragedy occurs.
I am most impressed by you Fay and will continue to support your ideals.”

“Your service is extremely valuable. The majority of HR issues we have experienced and many of our WHS issues have had a root cause in stress and mental health issues. After your training and facilitation of changes we have seen a marked improvement in productivity, moral, profits and employee relations. We are not only solving issues but are preventing problems from occurring.”

“I learnt more practical and sustainable solutions from your delivery of the Mental health First Aid Course than I did during my entire degree in psychology at university.”

“Until I heard your (Fay Jackson) educational and inspiring speech I had no idea that the way I was dealing with people I was called to pick up was affecting their immediate health and the outcomes of the future of both the individual and their family. We must change the way we are dealing with people with mental health problems.”

“We just thought that (names withheld) were problem kids and to tell you the truth we just wanted rid of them, now we have ways to support not only (names withheld) but other students and our staff who have mental health issues. Since undertaking your course several of our staff realized that they too needed support and solutions to difficulties they had been dealing with for some time. I did not expect such far reaching or positive outcomes.”

“The feedback from our staff following the mental health training delivered by Fay has been extremely positive. Overall, the staff has increased awareness of mental health issues. They feel more confident in asking clients questions relating to mental health and emotional well being and they can appropriately assist clients access services in the community that provides support in preventative, responsive and emergency situations.”

“Our workplace has recognised the need for change in how we address the mental health and emotional wellbeing of our staff. Introducing Vision In Mind Stay Well Action Plans has given managers in our organisation a really useful tool that allows us to take both a coordinated and collaborative approach in responding to mental health issues.

I have been able to tailor the Stay Well Action Plan to fit individual needs and circumstances and at the same time allow the responsibility for a staff members mental health needs to be in their control with an agreement on how I can best support my staff member clearly in place.

Thanks Fay for providing us with a tool that assists managers identify best how we can support our staff and work towards positive mental health outcomes together”.

“The Anglican Counselling Service has been overwhelmed by responses to the Mental Health First Aid courses in Northern Inland NSW which is largely due to Fay’s great facilitation skills, her knowledge and understanding of the subject mixed with humour and her sharing from personal experience making possible a recent state award for the Service in raising community awareness of mental health issues. Thank you Fay and keep up the great work.”

”It was a real honour to have you as our guest speaker at our recent staff forum Refresh, Renew, Reframe. Your performance was nothing short of brilliant and all present found you to be extraordinarily funny and entertaining. You showed an outstanding ability to humanise your experiences as a consumer in such a delightful, entertaining yet still sensitive manner. You certainly helped to de-stigmatise and raise the profile of Mental Health consumers. You are quite an inspiration and I will have no hesitation in recommending you to to others.”