Cappo was previously the Social Inclusion Commissioner for the State of South Australia[1] and later advised the Australian government on social policy and mental health reform.[2] In 2007, he was appointed Officer of the Order of Australia for service to social inclusion in South Australia.
Cappo is currently co-founder and Chief Executive of YouBelong,[3] a Ugandan-registered non-profit organisation working to strengthen fragile health systems and shift the focus of mental health care from institutional-based care to family and community-centred care.
Early life and career
Cappo was born in Adelaide and educated at St Joseph's Primary School at Kingswood and at Rostrevor College.
While completing a Bachelor of Arts in Social Work at the South Australian Institute of Technology (now University of South Australia), Cappo worked as a community welfare officer in the areas of child protection, family support and juvenile offending.[4]
The then South Australian PremierMike Rann appointed Cappo Chair of South Australia's Social Inclusion Board in 2002 and Social Inclusion Commissioner in 2006. His policy achievements[6] in that role included:
A reduction in rough sleeper homelessness in inner-city Adelaide by 50%
An increase in school retention rates from 67.2% in 1999 to 84.2% in 2010
A major reform of the mental health system known as a stepped system of care[7]
A blueprint for total reform of the disability system.
Cappo also served as an independent advisor to the Executive Committee of State Cabinet and a member of the South Australian Economic Development Board. He worked with the Government in directing the implementation of the South Australian Strategic Plan, with particular emphasis on social targets and outcomes, and produced an innovative form of joined up government that brought Government departments together to provide a more effective delivery of social inclusion programs.
This model[8][9] received supportive comments from the World Health Organization (WHO) Social Determinants of Health Report 2008.[10]
Cappo was appointed Deputy Chair of the national Social Inclusion Board in 2008 by then Australian Prime MinisterKevin Rudd. In 2010, Rudd's successor Julia Gillard appointed Cappo to a national role in mental health. In late 2011, Cappo stepped down from this position, and from his role with the Social Inclusion Board, after a political controversy sparked by allegations that he and Archbishop Philip Wilson failed to properly investigate allegations involving another South Australian priest in the 1960s. A subsequent investigation by a QC found there was no substance to the allegations.[11]
Work in East Africa
In 2016, Cappo co-founded Uganda-based YouBelong with Dr. Byamah Brian Mutamba,[12] a Ugandan senior psychiatrist.
YouBelong Uganda works closely with the Ugandan Ministry of Health to support programs designed to bring about mental health reform in East Africa,[13] and works to enhance the emotional wellbeing and mental health of school children in Jinja, Uganda, in partnership with the Jinja Educational Trust.[14]
YouBelong Uganda is funded through philanthropic donations and a research grant from the Wellcome Trust.[15]
In October 2023 Cappo presented the mental health innovations of YouBelong Uganda at the World Health Summit in Berlin[16] as part of a session[17] dedicated to Mental Health for All.
Academic appointments
From 2012 to 2018, Cappo was a senior research fellow[18] in the School of Social and Policy Studies at Flinders University in South Australia.
In 2024, he was appointed an Adjunct Professor in the School of Arts and Sciences,[19] Notre Dame University, Fremantle WA Campus (20), where he focusses on models of social justice and human rights in low income countries.
The University of Notre Dame Australia is a private Roman Catholic university with campuses in Perth in Western Australia and Sydney in New South Wales. It also has a regional campus in Broome in the Kimberley region. It was established by an act of the Parliament of Western Australia in 1989. Its Perth campus is notable for its restored late Georgian, Victorian and Edwardian-style architecture, most of which is ubiquitous in Fremantle's West End heritage area as a university town. Its two inner Sydney campuses are also located in historical landmarks, on Broadway and Darlinghurst, and it also has a number of clinical schools in regional New South Wales and Victoria.
The Congregation of Holy Cross, abbreviated CSC, is a Catholic clerical religious congregation of pontifical right for men founded in 1837 by Basil Moreau, in Le Mans, France.
Notre Dame Catholic Secondary School is a coeducational Catholic high school in Burlington, Ontario Canada. It was founded in 1989 by the Halton Catholic District School Board and enrols students from the 9th to 12th grades. However, many grade 12 graduates return for an optional 5th year of secondary school.
Glenside is a suburb in the local government area known as the City of Burnside, Adelaide, South Australia. The suburb is 4.9 kilometres south-east of the Adelaide city centre, home to 2,422 people in a total land area of 1.40 km2.
Social exclusion or social marginalisation is the social disadvantage and relegation to the fringe of society. It is a term that has been used widely in Europe and was first used in France in the late 20th century. In the EU context, the European Commission defines it as "a situation whereby a person is prevented from contributing to and benefiting from economic and social progress". It is used across disciplines including education, sociology, psychology, healthcare, politics and economics.
Carnegie Mellon University in Australia was the Australian campus of Carnegie Mellon University's H. John Heinz III College from 2006 in the city centre of Adelaide, South Australia. In June 2022 the operation announced it would close down. Current students will graduate but no new students would be admitted. From 2006 to 2022, over 1200 students completed degrees there.
The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Adelaide is a Latin Church metropolitan archdiocese of the Catholic Church in Australia located in Adelaide, South Australia.
John Anthony Hepworth was an Australian bishop. He was the ordinary of the Anglican Catholic Church in Australia and the archbishop and primate of the Traditional Anglican Communion, an international body of continuing Anglican churches, from 2003 to 2012.
Gregory Alan Mackie is a South Australian cultural advocate and entrepreneur who has worked to promote the arts and culture in Australia. He served two separate terms as an elected Councillor on the Adelaide City Council. He was managing director of independent bookshop Imprints Booksellers from 1984 to 2007, and founded the Adelaide Festival of Ideas in 1999.
Mark Christopher Butler is an Australian politician. He is a member of the Australian Labor Party (ALP) and has served in the House of Representatives since 2007. He was a minister in the Gillard and Rudd governments and also served as national president of the ALP from 2015 to 2018.
Margaret Julia Tobin was a psychiatrist and leader of Australian mental health services reform. She was the victim of a murder committed by Eric Gassy, a former psychiatrist whom she had played a role in removing from medical practice some years prior.
Thomas J. O'Hara served as Provincial Superior of the U.S. Province of Priests and Brothers of the Congregation of Holy Cross from his election to the position on June 15, 2012 until the election of Father Bill Lies on June 14, 2018.
Dame Anne Mandall Johnson DBE FMedSci is a British epidemiologist, known for her work in public health, especially the areas of HIV, sexually transmitted infections and infectious diseases.
The Rann government was the state executive government of South Australia led by Premier of South Australia Mike Rann of the South Australian Branch of the Australian Labor Party (ALP) from 2002 to 2011.
Vikram Harshad Patel FMedSci is an Indian psychiatrist and researcher best known for his work on child development and mental disability in low-resource settings. He is the Co-Founder and former Director of the Centre for Global Mental Health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM), Co-Director of the Centre for Control of Chronic Conditions at the Public Health Foundation of India, and the Co-Founder of Sangath, an Indian NGO dedicated to research in the areas of child development, adolescent health and mental health. Since 2024, he has been the Paul Farmer Professor and Chair of the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School in Boston, where he was previously the Pershing Square Professor of Global Health and Social Medicine. He was awarded a Wellcome Trust Principal Research Fellowship in 2015. In April 2015, he was listed as one of the world's 100 most influential people by TIME magazine.
Janice Clare Reid is an Australian academic and medical anthropologist, who has specialised in Aboriginal and refugee health. She was Vice-Chancellor of the University of Western Sydney from 1998 to 2013.
Fran Baum is an Australian social scientist who conducts research on the social and economic influences and determinants of health. She is director of the Southgate Institute of Health, Society and Equity at Flinders University, Australia, and became an Officer of the Order of Australia for her advocacy work on "improved access to community health care, and to professional organisations". In 2006, Baum was elected a Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia.
The Minister for Social Inclusion was a role in the Government of South Australia from 2004 to 2011.
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