0-8 Mental Health Services
Project summary:
During 2021 and 2022, Latrobe Health Assembly engaged Ninety Mile Consulting to explore and identify place-based challenges, opportunities and potential initiatives relating to early childhood learning and development across the Latrobe Valley. Throughout the consultation process, the community identified service gaps for early childhood mental health, together with misinformation and knowledge impacting the likelihood of young children being taken for treatment, care and support by their families.
LHA engaged Square the Circle to map relevant early childhood mental health services in the Latrobe Valley, including identifying key gaps and barriers to access for priority community members.
The research process involved three key phases to meet the project deliverables:
- Mapping
Working with stakeholders, and independently, to map all current mental health services for children in the Latrobe Valley. - Consultation
Listening to all stakeholders to identify gaps and barriers to access. - Workshopping
Using elements of codesign and consultation as appropriate to work collaboratively with a small group of stakeholders to identify a set of key local criteria that could be used to measure a range of possible new models of care.
The research process resulted in a model identifying the gaps in pre-access, access, post-access and issues with oversight in children’s mental wellbeing services in the Latrobe Valley. An action plan was created suggesting various short, medium and long-term recommendations to address the four overarching themes of:
- Education, prevention, and early intervention
- System navigation and case management
- Increasing supply of mental health care
- Child and family focused care
A number of the recommendations will go to the LHA executive board and will influence future work of LHA.
