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

5. Service Delivery Model
services, and the provision of more GP services. It is suggested that the service model could be
improved to better meet the needs of young people by addressing these gaps.
Twelve staff members across all five of the fieldwork sites believed that headspace should be
providing family support for some young people. A number of reasons were provided for offering
family services. Some staff argued that family support is required because a young person’s
problems are often intertwined with family problems and hence cannot be treated in isolation. This
was evident in the Parents and Carers Study where parents often talked about the whole family
struggling to deal with problems such as multiple family members with mental health problems, family
breakdown, and the suicide or death of a family member. Other staff members simply wanted to help
families in crisis:
We get a lot of parents in crisis on the phone; they don’t know where to go, they don’t know
where to start if they’ve sort of just discovered that their son or daughter is self-harming
or using drugs or something. They’re in complete crisis themselves as well as the young
person and they’ve just got nowhere to go. We sort of don’t have access to the funding
to support the family, but because we’re human we try to do as much as we can
(Administrative Officer)
I think that’s a gap because it really means that when young people have come here and
they’re feeling a lot better, if they’re going back into the same environment, well what does
that mean for that young person? (Service Manager)
Moreover, some staff felt that the provision of family based services, and treating the young person in
the family context, was required for headspace to offer a truly holistic preventative service.
There is a rigidity about what headspace will provide to young people. There is a lack of
family therapy skills, which is crucial to an early intervention service for this age group.
(Clinical Leader)
I think the more that there can be a focus on how do we produce or provide preventative
interventions – so parenting groups would be a great place to start (Clinical Psychologist)
Staff and other stakeholders also identified the provision of outreach services as a way to better
meet the needs of some young people, particularly those located in more isolated areas.
headspace is achieving some success in engaging young people with high levels of psychological
distress; however, some enhancements could be made to better meet the needs of specific
vulnerable groups. The profile analysis and qualitative data indicates that meeting the needs of CALD
young people with mental health problems is a challenge that headspace is not yet meeting. Further,
while a higher proportion of Indigenous young people than those in the general population are
accessing headspace services, the qualitative data indicates that engaging with this is a challenge
for some centres. Evaluation data suggests that engagement with more marginalised groups will
require partnerships with community organisations, as well as ongoing relationship building activities
that include local community members and leaders. Further research may be required to determine
if specific Indigenous and CALD workforce development as well as changes to treatment practices
(such as provision of outreach services, and/or increased capacity to see those that drop in to
centres without a pre-arranged appointment) would improve the engagement and outcomes of these
highly vulnerable young people.
Finally, while young people offered valuable insights into the services that they have received at
headspace and the impact of these, they were generally not able to suggest any changes to improve
the service. This is because the overwhelming majority of those interviewed were satisfied with the
treatment they had received:
I couldn’t think of anything right now, to be honest. I think it’s great with what they’re doing
already. Improvements – I couldn’t say that they need improvements, and the staff are all nice
and I think it’s a great place (Female, 20)
There wasn’t anything I didn’t like (Female, 13)
Of the few young people that offered suggestions for improvement, one recommended that
headspace should do more work in schools to make them more accessible; two young people
suggested that the service should be advertised more; and another wanted the counsellor to exclude
Social Policy Research Centre 2015
headspace Evaluation Final Report
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