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

3. Access and Engagement with Centres
environment and staff prior to receiving treatment:
We devote a lot of our resources here to community engagement and developing that
community partnership with schools and clubs and the community in general (Site Manager)
In the true sense of early intervention and prevention I think you have to have a very active
community engagement and community awareness model, as well as your clinical services
(Site Manager)
It’s good that we have community engagement – what they call soft entry – so we can sort of
demystify headspace. We’ve got things like school holiday programs, so people can come in
and not necessarily see a worker and have an appointment, but still they come into
headspace and they’re getting to learn about us and getting to meet us as workers (Youth
Worker)
Some staff reported that community engagement events were successful in drawing in vulnerable
young people:
I think we’re reaching more people with very few staff. I think – you know in the last few days
there has been a really good example of that – the community event, the connecting with
other agencies and other people in schools and a number a young people have come here
that would never have come here otherwise. It’s just a really good example of how we can
maybe make a difference to a lot more people (Clinical Leader)
Interviewed staff felt that the engagement strategies implemented by their centres were improving
awareness of mental health literacy at a community level. Indeed, in the Centre Managers’ Survey,
69% (n=20/29) of respondents rated their centre as very effective in raising the awareness of
youth mental health issues. The remaining 31% (n=9/29) rated their centre as effective in raising
awareness.
Finally, it was also clear in interviews with young people that positive engagement with headspace
practitioners helped to enhance mental health literacy at an individual level.
Social Policy Research Centre 2015
headspace Evaluation Final Report
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