This is a call out for solidarity and whatever financial support you can offer Scotty Rees (shared with Scotty's full permission).

Scotty is fiercely loved and respected in the Australian lived experience community (and beyond), for his authenticity, unwavering commitment, courage, capacity to connect, and passion for sharing the beating heart of peer work.

Scotty has shared his stories in many ways over the years, and a bit more is shared below. He was an Intentional Peer Support National Trainer for many years and in 2024 was keynote speaker at the International Stigma Conference in Malaysia (alongside Dr Roberto Mezzina. Pretty fancy, hey!?!). Many of us have had the privilege of spending time with Scotty, whether that's in Intentional Peer Support trainings, co-reflections, Alternatives to Suicide training, the CERT-IV in Peer Work ... he's given so much to our community over the years. Right now, he needs his community to step up for him.

The past 18 months have been incredibly challenging for Scotty and his family, complex beyond words. The impacts have been massive. This isn't the place to share those stories, but to call out to our community for any support you can offer Scotty (especially financial).

For a bit more about Scotty, this is from SHARC's Annual Report in 2022:

"For 35 years Scotty has been courageously (and often brazenly!) navigating the two sides of a mental health system. Layers of lived experience run deep in Scotty and they include long periods of addiction and incarceration and the psychological distress that comes with those adventures. Today Scotty is a fierce advocate for the lived experience community in Australia and revels in the co-creative power of the peer relationship.

After completing the IPS Core training in 2014 Scotty had an everlasting change in perspectives, where he was cracked open to new ways of being with people and most of all, new ways of making sense of how he experienced the world. The pillars of IPS seeped into his bones, he believes, because they worked.

Scotty has since been using the IPS Tasks and Principles in both lived experience and clinical settings across various spaces - community based mental health services, the juvenile and adult justice system, allied health networks and alcohol and other drugs services. Most of his work has been in regional and rural areas across three states of Australia. That’s because he’s a country fella at heart.

Scotty describes himself as a connector that thrives in shared human experiences and is just *so* honoured to be an IPS National Trainer (Australia) where he can join in on and observe the ever-reaching ripple of IPS.

Scotty now lives in Hervey Bay, Queensland, with his Goddess Penny. They are fur parents of two dogs, English Bull Terrier Flynn and his annoying little brother Simon, the King Charles Spaniel."

(Source: https://www.sharc.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/SHARC-Annual-Report-22.pdf)