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It started with Tony Miller, who's now an O.A.M. because he went through a difficult separation. He was struggling to see his kids. He turned to a number of support services, some of which were geared up for men, supposedly, but he just couldn't find any support that he felt was aligned with his needs, where he could speak to another dad, someone who could understand what he was going through, someone who didn't see him as the problem, that could actually see him as somebody that needed support. So he actually decided to create his own support. It didn't originally start with the intention of it being a large national charity. It started off with him putting an ad in the local paper in Coffs Harbour where he said, look, I'm going to be sat on the veranda at the local community centre, which is just around the corner from where he lived. There's a large veranda there, and we've been using that venue up until very recently, actually. And he said he'd be sitting there on a Sunday afternoon, not knowing if anyone was going to turn up. A few dads turned up straight away. Word spread and the local radio station got hold of it. They asked to interview him. He spoke about his issue. More dads started turning up. It just exploded. I think he tapped into perhaps unknowingly tapped into a need which he'd recognised for himself. But by starting something and then not being anything else quite like it, it just exploded. And I think the radio station then nationally syndicated some of the interviews with him. And so it exploded nationally very, very quickly. And guys from around the country started reaching out to Tony and saying, how could we do something like that local to us? Have you got any tips for us? He started the next thing you know, he's running an organisation which wasn't formally an organisation as such. It was just a bunch of blokes working together around the country, but seeing him as the unofficial leader. Yeah, that's kind of how it started.

So after a few years where just organically multiple groups had started, I think Tony as the founder and then I guess the overall national lead on this decided they needed some kind of structure, some sort of common name and branding. And so they started off on Father's Day 1999 with that first meeting. But within probably three years, it had become a national organisation with 20 to 30 unofficial groups around the country. And they decided that it was time to create some formality around the structure. And so initially it was set up as an association which ran dad's groups across the whole country. So it was across all states. Like I say, it's about 20 to 30 groups. And at that point, they decided to open up a head office in Coffs Harbour where Tony was based and where co-founder Alan Valja was and continues to this day. Alan was more kind of focused on working with the dads and working with the growing team across the country. So Alan who's on the phones today was at that time on the phones, but also he was the national volunteer manager. So his job was to travel the country on a shoestring because we didn't really have any money. So he would just drive round out of his own pocket around the country sleeping in his car, sleeping at people's houses that he didn't really know but who were offering him a place to stay because they wanted to volunteer to set up a group in Adelaide or Brisbane or Melbourne or Perth. And so he would travel the country and sit on the phones quite a bit. So it kind of grew that way. Tony, on the other hand, focused on going out to government and seeing if he could raise national funding. And I think it was around 2004 that he managed to get a bit of a breakthrough and the organisation achieved funding at a national level, but it was provided through the Department of Social Services in New South Wales to this New South Wales Association. But the funding was determined to be or was meant to be for national rollout. And the then charity actually became registered as a charity, was operating nationally, but it was still structured in a New South Wales manner. That was updated kind of 2016, 2017 during my tenure when I was on the board and acting as a CEO at that time. So it did change later on, but initially it was a New South Wales organisation operating nationally with some funding, some formal structure and with a national volunteer manager and what became like a CEO, which was Tony.

So right from the very early days when dads started getting together across the country, and that was all that existed in the early days was just the physical weekly get togethers in different places across the country. But every once in a while, we also had a mum approach us and say, look, she needed support. And she was being ostracised from her children and didn't understand why and felt very isolated and hopeless. And so, you know, the guys always welcomed the ladies in as it grew. Actually, I should say that it was always a minor part of what we did. And it might be like one mum for every 20, 30 dads, and it might be every few weeks that a mum would turn up. So it's a relatively rare thing, but it was also regular. It happened quite a bit. And so policy was developed around 2010 when we were at 11 years old, which was that if a mum turned up, the gents in the room were asked whether they were okay with a lady being in the room. And if the answer was yes, then she could join us. Invariably, the answer was always yes. But we did always show respect to the men say, you know, are you okay with it? Because some of these guys are traumatised and they may feel uncomfortable saying what they need to say in front of a woman. So that's kind of how MiDs started kicking off. And it became apparent probably about 2010 onwards that once we put policy in place around asking that question, that maybe it was time to actually set up a MiDs meeting. And I think one of the concerns around one of the challenges I should say of setting up MiDs was the fact that because there were so few of them compared to the men, it was harder to set up a regionally base so in one place where there was enough mums to meet on a weekly basis. And so for a long time, it really appeared to be mums just coming along to a dad's meeting. And then probably around 2015 2016 we started actively trying to set up a MiDs meeting which we did in Melbourne and one in Sydney. So we would go for the CBD of both those cities. On the basis the populations were large enough that there were probably enough mums to actually form a physical weekly meeting. And that had varied levels of success. Again, numbers were the issue. It would be very small numbers. And if I fast forward to today on the back of COVID where we pivoted and went online, that actually opened up an opportunity for MiDs, which is that we could then you know, we regularly have mums joining a weekly meeting online, but they're from all over the country. So that's actually kind of resolved that issue. But there probably is an argument to say that we could do more on the MiDs side of things to make it more female friendly and maybe capture a few more of the women that might be able to come along for help and need some help.

In terms of the evolution from dads in distress to mums in distress and then parents beyond breakup that really happened around 2013. So at that time I was a volunteer working for dads in distress in the Sydney area and I applied to join the board. I joined in 2013 and one of the first things that I and one of the other board members Cindy Rockstein, a lady at that time decided as the new blood on the board was that maybe we really should look at rebranding ourselves because we were increasingly looking after mums And like I said at that time we had groups for mums in Melbourne and Sydney. We felt that it was probably more accurate to move from a New South Wales association with charitable status to a national organization with charitable status and that in part in the process of doing that and evolving to that, that it was time to rebrand ourselves at a national level to parents beyond breakup. And we went through a very deep and lengthy consultation process both with all of our volunteers over 100 volunteers at that time. It was been around 2016 when we finally got to the point so it was like 2013 the process started of relooking at it. 2016 was when we actually passed the resolution across all financial members to move from an association to an organisation to a national company with charitable status and to rebrand from dads in distress that does mids to parents beyond breakup that does mids and dids and later grandparents with gids as well.

We have evolved  as an organisation in terms of our understanding of who we are. So if we go back to day one with Tony Miller, Tony was, and I think he's spoken about this quite publicly, so I don't think I'm giving anything inappropriate away here when I say that he felt suicidal. There was nowhere that he felt he could go to get help. And so really this was originally set up as a preventative measure to those feeling suicidal because they had separated and couldn't get access to their kids. And as often happens in organizational histories, as you grow and become more formal and more people get involved, sometimes you can get a little bit off track. And it's interesting that Tony left us at around 2010 as a full-time employee. He's remained connected with us ever since, but in other capacities as a volunteer and every once in a while we can consult with him, which is one of the things that he chose to do. Interestingly, from around 2010 onwards, when all of our funding was actually coming from the Department of Social Services, which doesn't really fund suicide prevention services, we started perhaps going in a slightly different direction, which is that we were a kind of a social service for parents who were separating, and so we were supporting them through that separation. So it wasn't a huge detraction from our history in terms of what we did, but the ultimate reason we were there might have shifted. It shifted slightly from suicide to prevention to kind of support of parents being the primary cause and what we did and the primary cause. And then if you go fast forward to the time we rebranded officially in 2016 and we became Parents Beyond Breakup, I think at that time we reclarified our purpose, which is that we are here to prevent suicide. The way we do it is to focus on one demographic, which happens to be separating parents, and the means by which we deliver the support to those people is both in-person groups, online groups, and helpline. But the primary cause came back on track that it was suicide prevention. And so with that clarity comes funding, because once you actually are clearly established as a suicide prevention service, then your funding comes from the Department of Health, which is primarily responsible for that. And so that is something that we've seen since 2016 when we rebranded and we actually approached the government and said we would like to grow and to provide a little bit more formality to what we do and how we support our volunteers and our reach across the country. With that came the funding for suicide prevention. And I think that's pretty clear that that is what we are today. We're a suicide prevention service that focuses in one particular area that has a very high demographic at risk of suicide.