The Healthy Ageing Service is a new community mental health service that specialises in the mental health and wellbeing of older adults.
They provide free and responsive secondary consultation advice and professional development education sessions, and also offer multi-disciplinary brief intervention for older adults with mild to moderate mental health needs.
The service has two teams funded by the Eastern Melbourne Primary Health Network based at Eastern Health and St Vincent’s Hospital who cover the Eastern/Northern Melbourne catchments.
The Healthy Ageing Service commenced by October 2020 and in its first year, saw a total of 536 referrals, consisting of:
- 239 primary consultation referrals
- 297 secondary referrals
- 44 education sessions
Some of the feedback received by GPs, service providers, clients and nurses of the service are:
“I was very grateful to find this service at the time as this was exactly what my client needed” (General Practitioner)
“I think the reference to staff wellbeing and connectedness were very relevant for this environment, thank you” (RACF Manager)
“It’s always a pleasure to refer to HASR as the feedback and knowledge is always there” (Community Health Service)
“I was really happy with the service and outcome” (Client)
EMPHN have recently provided extra funding to recruit additional mental health clinicians, increase administration and capacity building opportunities.
Read more about their first year celebrations, view the flyer below.
To find out more about the Healthy Ageing Service, view their flyer.