Alliance puts community at the heart of service design
18 July 2022
The Northern Adelaide Mental Health Alliance has developed a reputation as a collaborative group that drives integration and advocacy among mental health and community stakeholders in Adelaide’s northern suburbs.
“Putting the community at the heart of service innovation, design and planning is the best way to improve the links between stakeholders and service providers and deliver better outcomes for the people seeking those services,” said Shaun Sweeney, NALHN’s Acting Director of Allied Health and Community, Mental Health Division.
Consulting and collaborating with a wide range of services, and listening to the needs identified by the community, has provided great opportunities for the Northern Alliance to develop and implement new initiatives that are peer led and informed by clinicians, counsellors and those with lived experience.
“For example, we are working with Drug and Alcohol Services SA to embed a dual diagnosis specialist in community mental health services and to train all staff in key screening and brief intervention tools. And we have collaborated with MIND on the CONNECT project to support initiatives such as the South Australian Ambulance co-responder service,” said Shaun.
Further examples of these collaborations include how specialist NDIS mental health coordinators are integrated to improve consumer access to NDIS (Feros Care / NALHN Division of Mental Health) and a multi-agency youth service that ensures a “no wrong door approach” for young people accessing Sonder (Headspace, Emerge) and the NALHN mental health directorate.
“The development of the multi-agency youth service has resulted in less critical incidents as young people are ‘stepped up’ and ‘stepped down’ seamlessly between primary, secondary and tertiary mental health services,” said Sonder’s Youth Clinical Services Manager Kelly Stewart.
“One of the most exciting new projects we’re working on is the co-commissioning (between NALHN and Adelaide Primary Health Network) of Adelaide’s first Safe Haven Café.”
“This is a community-driven model that’s about setting up a venue where people seeking mental health support can get together in a comfortable and non-clinical setting and be able to talk with peer practitioners who have their own lived experience of mental health conditions, and/or receive support from a clinician such as a Psychologist, Nurse or Social Worker.”
Kelly and Shaun at St John’s Church in Salisbury where the Alliance’s first-ever Safe Haven Café will be located.
Once the program commences, the hours will be from 5pm to 9pm – a time when people seeking support are unable to get to conventional support services – and would otherwise most often present to an Emergency Department (ED).
“We know that EDs can be a challenging place for people in crisis. So the café model – where you can sit and get tea and coffee in a community space, rather than a clinical one, is something our community and stakeholders have been really positive about. We hope that it will help both relieve pressure on our EDs as well as creating an alternative destination for those who really need it,” says Shaun.