Young people experiencing mental health challenges that exceed primary care but fall short of acute services have long faced a gap in appropriate support. The draft headspace Plus and Youth Specialist Care Centres (YSCC) models of care represent a significant Commonwealth investment in addressing this missing middle, and QAMH welcomes the opportunity to contribute to their design.
Both models include positive features that QAMH supports, including multidisciplinary and youth-focused care, peer workforce roles, outreach approaches, family and kin support, and greater recognition of the social factors that shape mental health and wellbeing. In this submission we support:
- strengthening access and prioritisation arrangements so young people with the highest levels of unmet need, including those with complex, atypical or culturally shaped presentations, can access appropriate support
- making peer workers, bicultural workers and Social and Emotional Wellbeing practitioners mandatory components of the minimum workforce across all sites, rather than optional local enhancements
- embedding lived and living expertise in governance and leadership, not just service delivery
- formalising partnership agreements between headspace Plus, YSCCs and community-based mental health services delivered by NGOs as a condition of funding, not a local option
- strengthening continuity of care obligations so new services complement existing therapeutic relationships rather than disrupt them
- requiring regular cultural safety audits and genuine partnership with Aboriginal Community Controlled Organisations, guided by self-determination
- addressing the unresolved gap in access pathways for young people on temporary visas
- funding the integration functions needed to make these models work, including transition coordination, workforce development and partnership development, and recognising community-based mental health services as genuine implementation partners.
Read the Full Submission Here>
