Page 4156 - Week 12 - Thursday, 1 December 2022
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Ms Davidson spoke about the services that are being developed to support young people with trauma experiences and those who have comorbid presentations of mental health with trauma, disability and/or drug and alcohol challenges. This is something very close to my heart, because I hear far too often that the vulnerable young people who are engaged with child and youth protection experience gaps between services. I look forward to the great policy work and model development that have been done over the last two years being put into action with these new services.
The last two budgets have built on the first steps of scoping services for young Canberrans that were funded through the 2020-21 budget. The government has delivered on its commitment to roll out MindMap and fund the adolescent mobile outreach service. It is pleasing that, since MindMap was launched in October 2021, the site has been accessed by more than 25,000 people, with over 69,000 pages viewed. The youth navigators have received more than 550 telephone calls, which has progressively increased since the launch.
Subsequent to our commitment to deliver MOST, and building on Victoria’s successful rollout across its services, we have seen New South Wales and Queensland follow our lead and commit to roll out this program and realise its benefits. MOST is now available across 133 different sites across Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland, helping young people up and down the eastern seaboard. We committed to MOST, as did the three largest states, because it can be integrated with existing clinical care and also support young people who are waiting to receive clinical face-to-face support. It fits in exactly with the idea that young people need a multiplicity of service responses.
Orygen, Australia’s youth mental health experts, developed MOST in partnership with researchers, clinicians, computer scientists, creative writers, comic developers, experts in human computer interaction, and, most importantly, young people with lived experience of mental ill health and their families. MOST clinicians, vocational support workers and peer workers help young people and their clinicians to work towards collaboratively agreed upon goals.
MOST has a strong evidence base. In research trials, 97 per cent of young people using MOST said that it was a positive experience, 87 per cent found it helpful and 97 per cent of young people felt safe. Importantly, it meant fewer young people needed ongoing mental health support or they required less frequent support—improving access for young people to our child and adolescent mental health services and headspaces. It is really positive that the Office for Mental Health and Wellbeing has been working collaboratively with Orygen on delivering this evidence-based product for young Canberrans.
The rollout of MOST will make a significant contribution to better outcomes, but Mr Pettersson’s motion rightly points to the need to advocate with the commonwealth government for increased headspace services in the ACT and delivery across the rest of our commitments in this space as well.
As members would be aware, headspace is a key partner in the provision of mental health services in the ACT for young people aged 12 to 25, and it is funded by the
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