Mind Connections’ Commitment to Community: Liaison Clinics, Wellness Hubs, and Educational Collaborations

At Mind Connections, our mission has always been clear: to strengthen mental health, wellbeing, and community resilience through meaningful partnerships, shared learning, and culturally responsive care. Today, we reflect on three collaborations that show this commitment. These include fortnightly liaison clinics with Eleanor Duncan Aboriginal Services, the wellness initiatives through the Women’s Shed / Women’s Wellness Hub in the Hills Shire, and our enriching student placement partnerships with Western Sydney University.

Together, these programs extend beyond traditional care models. They build connections, enhance community wellbeing, and create opportunities for education, cultural respect, and shared healing.

1. Fortnightly Liaison Clinics with Eleanor Duncan Aboriginal Services

One of our most valued partnerships is with Eleanor Duncan Aboriginal Services, a community-controlled Aboriginal health organisation serving people across Darkinjung Country on the Central Coast of New South Wales. For nearly three decades, Eleanor Duncan has provided culturally safe, holistic health care. They have been integrating physical, emotional, social, and cultural well-being in service delivery.

Holistic and Culturally Grounded Care

Eleanor Duncan asserts that true health is more than the absence of illness. It embraces connection to culture, family, community, and spiritual well-being. Their team, consisting of general practitioners, nurses, allied health professionals, mental health workers, and community support practitioners, delivers a wide range of support including chronic disease management, youth services, antenatal care, suicide prevention programs, and social and emotional wellbeing support.

Bridging Services Through Liaison Clinics

Our fortnightly liaison clinics with Eleanor Duncan represent a shared commitment to accessible, culturally informed mental health care. These clinics allow Mind Connections specialists to work directly with community members in their own health setting. The liaison model helps integrate mental health expertise into a holistic health framework where trust is already established.

Through these clinics, we aim to:

Enhance access to mental health assessments and support
Promote continuity of care where physical and emotional wellbeing are treated as interconnected
Support early intervention, helping reduce distress and build resilience.

2. Collaboration with Women’s Shed Hills Shire: Wellness Hub, Walking Group, and Retreat

Mental health and wellbeing flourish when people feel connected, supported, and physically well. That ethos underpins our collaboration with the Women’s Shed Hills Shire initiative, manifested through the Women’s Wellness Hub in Castle Hill.

What is the Women’s Wellness Hub?

Launched as a community space for women of all ages, the Women’s Wellness Hub brings together diverse women in a welcoming environment to build connection, share experiences, and participate in activities that support wellbeing.

The hub hosts weekly wellness-focused sessions ranging from creative activities like canvas painting to movement practices like tai chi, music groups, luncheons, cultural celebrations, and drop-in social time. These sessions aren’t just about programming. They’re about creating belonging, reducing social isolation, and encouraging peer support.

A Safe Space for Connection

For many women in the Hills Shire, the Wellness Hub has become a ritual of care, a place where friendships grow, stories are shared over coffee and cake, and resilience is strengthened through community support. This environment resonates with what we know about community wellbeing: that connection and shared experience are foundational to mental health.

Wellness Walking Group

Beyond weekly hub activities, our collaboration extends to wellness-oriented walking groups including, gentle opportunities for women to engage in physical activity together, boost endorphins, and enjoy nature’s grounding presence. Walking groups foster regular routine, mutual encouragement, and enhanced wellbeing through movement and conversation.

3. Student Placement Partnerships: Clinical Psychology, Social Work, and Social Sciences at WSU

True community impact extends beyond immediate care. It lies in education, mentorship, and supporting the next generation of care professionals. At Mind Connections, we partner with Western Sydney University (WSU) to provide meaningful student placement opportunities for students in clinical psychology, social work, and social sciences. This collaboration helps bridge academic learning with real-world experience.

Why Student Placements Matter

WSU’s health, psychology, and social sciences programs emphasise practical experience as a crucial part of professional growth. Students in courses like Professional Psychology Placement and social work programs are required to undertake supervised field placements where they apply theory to practice under guidance.

Beyond Practicum: Awards and Recognition

Our partnership with WSU extends beyond placements to include programs that celebrate mental health advocacy among students. Mind Connections encourages early engagement with mental health awareness, reflective practice, and peer support. This emphasis on recognition serves two purposes: it elevates mental health as a worthy professional focus, and it encourages students to think creatively and empathetically about community wellbeing.

The Heart of Our Work: Connection, Collaboration, and Care

Across these three pillars, a core theme emerges: sustainable wellbeing grows where people feel seen, supported, and connected.

Cultural Respect and Shared Learning

Our work with Eleanor Duncan has deepened our understanding of how culture shapes wellbeing and healing. Through fortnightly clinics, we learn from Aboriginal health professionals and community members about resilience framed around culture, identity, and community connection.

Community Belonging and Shared Space

The Women’s Wellness Hub reminds us that care is not just clinical, it’s relational. It’s brewing a cup of coffee with a neighbour, laughing at a shared activity, and knowing someone will walk with you on a Thursday afternoon.

Education as a Bridge to Impact

Our partnerships with WSU show that community care is intergenerational. By supporting student placements and awards, we help forge tomorrow’s professionals, equipped not only with knowledge but with lived experience of community-centred practice.