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

Appendix B
The assumptions described are implicit in the current expansion model as defined by the Department
of Health, as there is little scope for hNO to vary the dollar allocation to centres based on higher
costs of doing business in particular areas. That is, the current centre allocation model is constrained
to an average of $842,000 per centre with a range of $600,000 per annum to $1,100,000 per annum
for fully operational centres.
There may be some capacity at hNO to vary the funding made available to individual centres (so long
as the overall average of $842,000 per centre is maintained). For example, greater lead agency input
can supplement the overall cost of running any given headspace centre. However, this information
was not available to the evaluators nor were the individual funding agreements with individual
centres. Therefore, for the purpose of this evaluation, centre allocation and costing is based on
headspace grant costs alone. Note that for the reference period of the evaluation costs data for some
remote centres such as Mt. Isa were out of scope. The focus is on fully operational (Rounds 1-4)
centres.
While the extent of model flexibility to tailor costs to parameters such as rurality is not possible to
evaluate due to data availability, this is a significant factor for expansion beyond 100 centres, as
new centres will be located disproportionally in non-urban and remote areas in comparison with the
geographic distribution of centre allocation for the first 100 centres.
This issue also bears closer consideration for centres currently in existence. For example, a number
of headspace centres in highly urbanised areas (i.e. Camperdown, Collingwood and Parramatta)
have youth populations of over 100,000 within a 10 km radius, whereas a number of regional
headspace centres have total service populations of less than 5,000 within 10 km. That is, potential
service populations within 10 km of some urban headspace centres can be twenty times greater
than some regional centres. However, the current funding model is quite tightly constrained, and
these centres receive broadly equivalent funding despite the wide variation in size of their respective
service populations. The allocation of centres to regional locations reflects a number of factors,
including equity of access and potentially greater need per capita, but these inequalities suggest a
need for closer examination of the current centre allocation and funding models.
To assess the flexibility of the headspace grant funds component of the centre funding model, 2013-
14 centre level core grant funds as recorded in the HCFA were plotted against the youth population
of the SA3s/ SA4s. Only fully operational (rounds 1-4) centres were included in this analysis.
Following the methodology for assessing youth population, headspace centres in SA3s/ SA4s which
already had a headspace centre were excluded from this analysis. Therefore, Figure B1 is comprised
of information from 52 fully operational headspace centres.
Figure B1 Core 2013-2014 headspace grant funding by SA3/SA4 youth population size
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