This Is A Conversation Starter (TIACS) - Blank Pages and Empty Spaces

Carpenter Daniel Allen and his apprentice Ed Ross met on a Brisbane worksite in 2014. They would talk regularly about going into business together and were floating the idea of launching a workwear brand. Then in 2015, losing a friend to suicide forced them to confront how Australia’s mental health crisis manifests within the trades industry. Upon reflection, they realised that for many blue-collar workers, the sombre tone in which mental health is spoken about, is a barrier to asking for help. For Daniel and Ed, the solution was to find a light-hearted way of broaching conversations about mental health that is accessible to the ‘Aussie bloke’ outlook. They wanted to show the importance of vulnerability and the power of dropping your guard. Meeting Peter Ball from Impact Academy, they were introduced to the concept of a social impact organisation. This presented a way to combine their two aims: develop a workwear brand and reduce stigma surrounding mental health struggles.

Trademutt, a funky workwear brand designed to start conversations about mental health was launched in 2018. The aim was to make an invisible issue impossible to ignore. Part of the organisation’s philosophy is to make as much social impact in the supply chain as possible, including upcycling materials and products.

What happens, though, if a conversation starts and either you don’t know how to proceed, or the person needs professional help?

Daniel and Ed understood two things:

To responsibly improve transparency around mental health struggles, it is important to provide pathways to professional health if needed.
The stoicism prevalent in the blue-collar industry means many workers don’t deem themselves to be in severe enough crisis unless they experience suicidal ideation.

So, in 2020, Daniel and Ed established a specialised not-for-profit counselling service targeted to industry. This Is A Conversation Starter (TIACS) is the mental health support service you tell your mates about, offering free Australia-wide call and text support for tradies, truckies, rural workers, blue collar workers, and those that care about them. There is a QR code under the pocket of the hi-vis shirt that links directly to TIACS services. TIACS is available to trades workers for whom the stereotypical image of a man sitting on his bed with his hands on his head in a dimly-lit room, doesn’t resonate. It is aimed at providing early intervention, helping people before they reach the point of crisis. The service aims to be as accessible as possible, to remove the confusion associated with navigating the overloaded and underfunded mental health system. People are encouraged to reach out even if they are just having one bad day, or if they can see troubled waters ahead and want to prevent mental ill-health. When a person contacts TIACS, they are connected to an intake worker who will triage and book them in with a counsellor. The counsellor understands the unique challenges industry workers face and can relate to them through using shorthand ‘tradie’ language. For example, often people contact TIACS because of relationship issues brought about through the long days, isolation or Fly In Fly Out schedules, specific to the trades industry. To ensure counsellors are equipped with the latest industry knowledge, they attend personal development every two weeks. TIACS can also advocate, write referrals and make calls on someone’s behalf so that they can recieve more regular assistance.

TIACS is unique in that often call or text services offer one-off advice or act as a referral service. People connecting with TIACS have the option of multiple sessions and can connect with the same counsellor each time so they don’t need to repeat themselves.

For people who are hesitant to reach out to TIACS, it can help to ‘flip the script’ and think about our mental health in the same way as our physical health, for example, a lot of workers would say yes to having multiple free sessions with a personal trainer; TIACS is offering you multiple free sessions with a trainer for your mind.

Up to November 2023, 71 per cent of callers were male. The average caller was 38 years of age on the eastern seaboard and from 2022 -2023, the biggest increase in calls came from farmers apprentices, and truckies.

TIACS is supported through 50% of the profits from TradeMutt shirts; it is funded by industry for industry. As of April 2023, they also recieved regular donations from thirty-eight industry aligned businesses. Together these businesses form the TIACS Alliance.

In July 2024, TIACS announced a three year partnership with Bunnings Trade. At the time of announcement, more than 18,500 tradespeople and their families had recieved more than $3 million of free counselling support from TIACS. As part of the partnership, Bunnings Trade released a limited-edition co-branded work shirt and water bottle, with all money from sales going directly to support TIACS. As of September 2024, the first collaboration with Bunnings Trade had raised $600,000 for TIACS. This is well-deserved success for Daniel and Ed, whose journey began from tragedy and a determination to demystify mental health.

TradeMutt and TIACS were inspired by the death of Daniel and Ed’s friend Dan, a passionate Liverpool FC fan. Liverpool fans sing You’ll Never Walk Alone to their team before a match. So, as a tribute to their friend, YNWA is sewed onto the pocket of every TradeMutt shirt. It serves another purpose too, it is there to remind everyone who sees it that there is always help available and no problem is too big or small to share.