Carol McDonough

In 1982 her influential work led to the Commonwealth Government redefining legislation on disability to include people with mental and emotional disability. This enabled Commonwealth funding to become more available for mental health programs including community based programs.

Her contributions offer particular inspiration against a backdrop of a life long story of struggle and determination with hidden disabilities, little understood illness and impacts of accidents including endless pain. Being also dyslexic, dyspraxic and left handed, Carol found school and the attitude of some 1950s educators quite challenging. Through all these challenges, she commenced a university degree in agriculture, completed a youth leadership diploma and a postgraduate Arts degree in Social Sciences at Monash University.

A catalyst and early initiator, her considerable achievements also include involvement in Indigenous affairs, initiating summer schools at Monash University and initiating strategies to retain nurses in Victorian hospitals. More recently, as a rural woman working in Victoria and Tasmania on sustainable food production, Carol has been working on designing processes to understand the importance of public health safety and community engagement in toxic environment management. She is currently involved in similar processes for drought management and water issues.

Carol led a visionary community empowerment campaign in the clean up of a contaminated former gasworks site in Castlemaine which was celebrated by all parties for its non-adversarial approach and was profiled at an international conference (CleanUp07) on contaminated site remediation.