S4:E12 | Natasha Anderson: Keeping Children Visible

Pebble in the Pond

Involving people with lived experience in the journey to greater mental health treatment and support helps us to build understanding, reduce stigma and discrimination, and improve the quality, relevance, and mental health research.

This week’s guest Tash Anderson is a passionate advocate for children and young people who have experienced family violence and who have been through the out-of-home care system.

Tash was the Inaugural Youth and Young Person representative on the Victim Survivors’ Advisory Council (VSAC) in Victoria for three and half years. She is currently the co-chair of Victoria’s first Child Protection Ministerial Youth Advisory Group (MYAG) and a member of the Roadmap Implementation Ministerial Advisory Group (RIMAG). Tash is also a Lived Experience Consultant with Berry Street’s Y-Change initiative and studying a Bachelor of Animation at Deakin University.

Perhaps Tash’s most well know piece of advocacy is ‘TASH’– a short film that she wrote, illustrated, directed, and narrated sharing her personal experience of family violence, living in out-of-home care and how it affected her. The film has been shown at film festivals in Sydney and San Francisco and nominated for awards at CinefestOZ and Sydney Film Festival.

Tash is committed to telling her story about growing up in out-of-home care and working to understand the impacts of family violence so that the voices of children and young people are reflected in family violence reform.

Stay tuned as Tash shares her story with us.