Is headspace making a difference to young people’s lives?

7. Conclusion
The evaluation of headspace focused on assessing the effectiveness of the program. This
assessment included an examination of young people’s access to and engagement with the program,
the service delivery model and client outcomes. This scope oriented the project towards a mixed
method evaluation, informed by multiple data sources. The evaluation findings are somewhat mixed
– a result that complicates a simple synthesis of findings. Moreover, as evidenced in Chapter 4, any
assessment of program effect must consider multiple outcome indicators as a narrow focus on K10
scores can obscure other important effects. This is most evident in the analysis of suicidal ideation
which showed that some young people who did not show a clinical or significant improvement in
psychological distress levels did show significant reductions in suicidal ideation.
As evidenced throughout this report, headspace is a complex program, serving a diverse range of
vulnerable young people with high levels of psychological distress and a range of social, emotional
and health disorders. The evaluation found that headspace is generally accessible and effective. As
is typical in large human service evaluations, the qualitative data is overwhelmingly positive, with
most young people and their parents attributing improvements across a number of outcome areas to
headspace while the statistical data shows a more modest pattern of program effect.
The key findings and conclusions related to the evaluation scope areas are outlined below.
Access and Engagement
headspace was established to provide a highly accessible mental health program for Australia’s
young people, and the findings indicate that this program goal is being achieved. Evaluation data
shows that headspace is being accessed by a diverse group of young people whose need for
mental health care is evidenced by young peoples’ K10 scores on entry. Three in four young people
were recorded as having high to very high levels of psychological distress at first assessment.
The evaluation shows that headspace has had success in engaging groups of young people who
traditionally have been disadvantaged in their access to mental health care. Most notably, young
people living in regional areas as well as those from Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander
backgrounds are over-represented as headspace clients. These findings are important. The first
indicates that headspace is providing services to a significant proportion of young people within
communities that traditionally have few or no options for specialised local-based youth mental health
care. Young people living in regional areas represent 26.2% of the population nationally, but make up
39% of the headspace client population.
Further, Indigenous young people comprise 3.7% of the youth population nationally but make up
7.4% of headspace clients. This over-representation is significant as Indigenous young people are
a high risk group for emotional and psychological problems but are less likely to seek help than
non-Indigenous young people (Price & Dalgleish, 2013). While the proportion of Indigenous clients
varies greatly according to the geographic location of centres, this over-representation works
towards balancing inequalities in mental health provision and outcomes for Indigenous young people.
Qualitative data indicates that some centres could do more to make their services more culturally
appropriate for Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander clients. Data suggests that more flexible and
informal drop-in services are more likely to engage Indigenous clients, as are outreach models.
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