Meet the team

Meet Mel Lightfoot, Fortem intake officer and care coordinator 

Mel is Fortem’s longest serving staff member and is often the first person first responders and their families encounter when reaching out to Fortem. She is also a dedicated community volunteer, including with the Great Lakes Suicide Prevention Network which she established several years ago. 

‘I’ve been with Fortem since 7 December 2020, and it’s been an evolving, humbling experience that continues to challenge and grow me,’ Mel says. 

As an intake officer, Mel connects with people navigating complex or vulnerable situations by offering risk assessments, wellbeing support, walking them through Fortem’s intake process, and redirecting them to other parts of Fortem as needed.  

As a care coordinator, Mel supports individuals through external referrals, workers compensation navigation, and structured care planning. She’s recently had the pleasure of helping create Fortem’s wellbeing workshop series with the rest of the clinical team, including the mindfulness group. Project planning is becoming a growing passion. 

Mel’s journey before coming to Fortem has been what she describes as ‘anything but linear’, with roles at pet shops, supermarkets, in travel insurance and administration, as well as in family business while raising three children. Mel and her family then relocated to Forster NSW where Mel undertook a Diploma in IT Systems administration and opened her own copy centre business. With a motto of ‘rest when you’re dead’ she threw herself into work but subsequently learned that working non-stop was not a healthy strategy.  

Feeling burnt out and seeking something new, Mel began a Bachelor of Psychological Science, followed by a Master of Social Work, all while continuing to work within her husband’s business and volunteering with the Rural Fire Service.  

She then worked in community health and health care, founded the Great Lakes Suicide Prevention Network, continued to volunteer with the Rural Fire Service and volunteered with the National Association for Loss and Grief, eventually becoming the Hunter Coordinator. 

In 2020, she began working with Fortem while also volunteering with Lifeline and working with a clinical provider to deliver wellbeing workshops to high school students, offer NDIS psychosocial support, and support older adults transitioning to residential care.  

Mel now works with Fortem full-time and is seeking to obtain her Mental Health Accreditation so she can take on a clinical client workload. Always looking to give back to the community, Mel continues to volunteer in her spare time, and in 2024 was the NSW Mid North Coast Adult Volunteer of the Year and a state finalist for the NSW Volunteer of the Year. 

When asked what boosts her own wellbeing, Mel says ‘evenings with The Addams Family, Bewitched, or I Dream of Jeannie, while folding laundry or stacking the dishwasher’ are her homecoming ritual, but she also loves keto cheesecake, a steak with butter and eggs, magnesium salts in her bath, organised email folders, zero unread notifications on her computer, and most importantly, ‘snuggling my staffy (who wears natural black eyeshadow – very glam).’ 

We asked Mel what the best advice she has ever received is and she had lots to impart: 

• ‘We are all equal. Class, title, uniform – it doesn’t change our core humanity.’ 

• ‘Anxiety and excitement feel the same in the body. That reframed everything – from early public speaking nerves to leading mindfulness workshops and addressing a room of RFS members.’ 

• ‘Breathe. Intentional breathing has carried me through child-rearing, crisis, grief, and growth.’ 

• ‘Roll with the punches. Life will throw curveballs. Dodge if you can, absorb if you must. But let it wash off’ 

• ‘Choose your hard.’ 

• ‘You can change—if you’re consistent, curious, and kind about it.’ 

• ‘I think, therefore I am. The brain is astonishing. The body? Even more so. 

• ‘Walk your integrity. Be the person you say you are—no performative fluff, just truth. 

And what would Mel say to her 15-year-old self? 

‘You’re enough. Say NO! Boundaries aren’t walls – they’re clarity. Stay kind. Stay curious. Integrity will light the way. Trust your inner self.’ 

Thanks so much for sharing, Mel, we are so lucky to have you on the Fortem team.