2023 Charity partner announcement
We are proud to announce Emerge & see as our 2023 Chairty partners.
Emerge & see was set up in 2021 by Alana and Pia who are two medically retried police officers, their charity assists NSW & ACT emergency service workers who suffer from PTSD and their families.
Our club captain Caden caught up with Alan to talk more about the Chairty and below is a article that gives a small insight to the great work they do.
The first story Alana Singleton tells ends with the sheer number of emergency service workers who were "broken and lost".
Police officers, ambulance officers, firemen, and SES workers a shadow of themselves, seeking treatment for their mental health. Singleton and Pia Schindler had both been grappling with PTSD, and knew something had to change.
Emerge & See was born.
Now the organisation has joined the Queanbeyan Whites as the club's charity partner for the 2023 season to assist emergency service workers struggling with PTSD and other mental health-related issues.
The Whites will host an Emerge & See charity day on August 5 at Campese Oval, with the reigning John I Dent Cup winners to wear one-off jerseys in their clash with the Uni-Norths Owls.
Singleton feels a sense of synergy between Emerge & See and the Whites, confident the partnership can leave a lasting legacy.
"We were fighting through the process and navigating life with a significant mental health injury that saw us lose so much capacity, not just to do our jobs as police officers, but to just live an ordinary life," Singleton said.
"We both ended up in mental health inpatient care. It was the first time I had ever walked into something like that and realised there were so many emergency services workers in those facilities that were broken and lost.
"Emerge & See was created while we were in hospital. We realised there was a need to stand up and do something. We spent a year researching why there was no support for emergency service workers. There's a huge stigma around mental health.
"We started Emerge & See to start supporting workers who identified they had mental health issues, who realised their mental health was deteriorating to a point they could no longer work. We provide support and connection for those people."
Emerge & See began in 2021 and runs connection, peer-based and wellness-based activities designed to help members rediscover their sense of community, while providing individual support for family members.
Monthly catch-ups are run from Byron Bay to Coffs Harbour, Nambucca to Port Macquarie, Newcastle to Sydney, and Bathurst to Shoalhaven.
The organisation visits emergency service workers with seminars about the impact of overexposure to trauma, giving them culturally appropriate tools to manage their mental health.
"You will find SES workers, RFS workers, police officers, ambos, firies, who often are quite heavily involved in their communities. When their mental health deteriorates, they actually detach from family, from community, and they disengage from those service-based activities," Singleton said.
Which is where partnering with the Whites can make a difference.
"Partnering with a community sports club like the Whites means we give that opportunity for members and their families to re-engage together with community activities," Singleton said.
"We'll be encouraging them to go down and watch a rugby game, to go down and help with the barbecue, to really feel a part of a community again."
