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

7. Conclusion
Overall the evaluation found a significant need for early intervention for young people with mental
health, substance misuse, social/emotional and sexual/physical health problems. headspace is
making some headway to address the service need and has had some success, especially in mental
health. The cost of headspace treatment appears comparable to community mental health care.
Further, if headspace did not exist, it is likely that large numbers of young people would not access
services or would access them at a much later stage in the development of their disorders, potentially
incurring significant costs to the government as well as difficulties for the young people and their
families. Nevertheless, the evaluation has identified a number of ways in which headspace could
improve its service delivery model and its access and engagement processes to better serve young
Australians.
Implications for future research
The evaluation identified a number of additional studies that, if undertaken, would make a valuable
contribution to a better understanding of headspace and youth mental health care in Australia.
A significant proportion of headspace clients receive only one or two occasions of service. The
evaluation is unable to explain this high rate of single service use as administrative data does not
explain why they disengaged, and young people who had left the service early were not interviewed.
It is suggested that a longitudinal study be undertaken that monitors the service use of early leavers.
As the evaluators were only working with one year’s data, we were unable to see if these people
return after a period of time. Further, interviewing single service users would provide valuable
information on the needs and motivations of young people who do seek help but disengage early
from support services.
Also, the logic behind headspace is that as an early intervention service, it will minimise the impact
of mental illness over the lifetime of clients. Given the data limitations, the evaluation was unable to
establish if this is the case. It is suggested that further work be done in this area as more long-term
data collected via the hCSA becomes accessible to researchers. To confirm the efficacy of early
intervention in youth mental health, research will require access to other datasets such as MBS and
hospital admission data.
Social Policy Research Centre 2015
headspace Evaluation Final Report
115