Ice forum moves to Mirboo North
ORGANISERS of a drug forum on ice to be held in Mirboo North next week are expecting upwards of 150 people to attend.
The forum will be held next Wednesday, November 4 at 7pm at the Walter J Tuck Reserve and is being run through the generous support of the Commonwealth Lodge (and Freemasons Victoria) with backing from the Mirboo North Football Netball Club.
The drug ice is rife throughout South Gippsland and Bass Coast and the forum in Mirboo North follows on from the highly successful one held in Wonthaggi attended by 350 people last week.
Doing a lot of the leg-work in organising the community ice presentation is Andrew Geary along with his partner Anita Bailey.
Andrew has strong motivation for holding this forum and its related to losing his brother Glenn through dependency on alcohol and the resulting mental health issues which this causes.
“Ice is having the same impact on lives and families as is alcohol; the mental health issues this is creating in communities is enormous,” Mr Geary told the Star.
“We just took it upon ourselves to do something about this problem and we need to keep pushing the message out there how bad the drug Ice is, it destroys lives and families.”
Andrew has arranged some excellent key speakers to attend and present to the forum; all from the Latrobe Regional Hospital. Gillian Clark is a dual diagnosis senior clinician; Jo Colvin, a nurse practitioner candidate AOD emergency department working in clinical liaison, and Peter Little working on health promotions.
“We had a preliminary night with these speakers and they were keen to go further so we decided to throw this open to the community.”
Mr Geary wants to see a big turnout from the community and he has been spreading the message out far and wide through the communities of Mirboo North, Leongatha, Dumbalk, Meeniyan, Berrys Creek, Boolarra and Thorpdale.
“We want to see entire families come, parents, individuals, students, children; the more that come come and listen the better.”
“The problem has expanded that much that the support services aren’t properly in place to deal with the issues.”
The presentation is expected to cover ice, alcohol abuse and mental health awareness.
Entry is by gold coin donation and all are welcome.
Don’t miss it: an ice forum is to be held in Mirboo North next week; Andrew Geary and his partner Anita Bailey have been spreading the word far and wide.
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Posted by Tayla Kershaw on Oct 27 2015. Filed under Featured. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry
