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

Appendix B
centres and Localities in non-metropolitan areas which are within approximately an hour’s travel time
of existing headspace centres could be considered to have access to services.
Allocation of centres
The youth population could be weighted using the current headspace weighting method, as
described earlier. Therefore, greater weight would be assigned to those areas with higher levels
of disadvantage, as defined by SEIFA, and remoteness, determined using ARIA. As a result,
those living in more remote areas, or in areas with low socio-economic status, are prioritised in
the allocation of additional centres. UCLs with very small populations could be excluded from the
allocation model. Alternative service delivery modes could be considered for these areas.
Centre capacity
Again, centre capacity provides an important component for youth access to services and an
important lever which could be altered in the current model. For example, varying the headspace
grant centre funding, to tie more closely to centre demand, may allow for more efficient and equitable
delivery of services particularly when allocating centres to small UCLs.
There are 1,592 UCLs regions in non-metropolitan areas in Australia. Almost all UCLs have youth
populations of less than 3,500 12-25 year olds (3.6%) and only 10% of UCLs in non-metropolitan
areas have youth populations greater than 1,000 12-25 year olds. While we lack detailed information
on efficient service capacity, it is possible that areas with small youth populations would not support
full headspace sites and smaller centres may be required.
If a lower limit of 1,000 youth population was set, 22 areas would be in-scope for centre allocation.
This would include 5 new centres in metropolitan areas and 17 centres to UCL regions. If a lower
population limit was set at 3,500, as is the case in the current allocation model, 5 additional sites
could be allocated in metropolitan areas and 2 in non-metropolitan areas. It is important to note that
the allocation of centres is highly dependent on the current availability of mental health services,
and potential lead agencies in the area. In the current model, this is described within the ‘human
intelligence component’. However, this cannot be considered within the evaluation.
Although we lack sufficient data to determine an upper limit of service capacity for headspace
centres, the question of centre capacity remains crucial to any efficient expansion of the headspace
model.
Evaluation
UCLs are likely to represent a better definition of a functional town and greater likelihood of
access for youth within the geographic unit, when compared to SA3s. The use of administrative
boundaries to define access is associated with some clear administrative benefits. For example,
ASGS boundaries are relatively stable over time, well-identified, and have defined populations.
This increases the ease of implementation of the model of centre allocation. However, in some
cases, areas, and in particular SA4s, contain large populations which require more than one
headspace centre to meet the demand for services and allow for equitable access to services. This
alternative model does not address the issue of excess demand for single headspace centres in
large population SA4 areas; see Alternative Model 1 above for a possible solution to that access
issue. In addition, if this model was extended to its geographic limit, a large number of areas with
small population sizes would be allocated a centre. As outlined in the centre capacity section above,
a lower limit of region size, in addition to the introduction of alternatives to traditional centres (e.g.
smaller centres operating on a part-time basis), needs to be considered to prevent this model being
prohibitively expensive due to the number of centres required whilst still improving youth access A
further consideration is that previous analyses suggest that young people are unlikely to travel large
distances to headspace and, as a result, the use of a 1 hour of travel cut-point for access in nonmetropolitan
areas is unlikely to correspond with a fair definition of service access. It is possible
that non-metropolitan areas with small populations could be better serviced by alternative methods
of service delivery, such as fly-in fly-out services or online service provision. These are discussed
further below.
Social Policy Research Centre 2015
headspace Evaluation Final Report
159