Youth Enhanced Services

The use of performance indicators and targets within a monitoring and evaluation (ME) framework can provide helpful information that enables Youth Enhanced Services and Primary Health Networks to continually improve. This resource supports the development of appropriate performance indicators and targets.

To stimulate the thinking of those involved in developing, planning, commissioning, and providing youth mental health programs, this brief guide provides an overview of the implementation science field

Reviewing and refining eligibility criteria has been a key project for services participating in the Implementation Lab. This ensures the criteria meets the needs of the local region and that they are understood by key referrers and other stakeholders. This toolkit outlines the process so services and PHNs can guide themselves through a review of their own criteria.

Worldwide, there is an ever-increasing expectation that youth mental health care be co-designed with young people. Whilst many organisations see the value of partnering with young people, there is much confusion about what co-design is and the term is often mistakenly used to describe any type of youth participation.Developed with members of Orygen’s Youth Advisory Council and Primary Health Network Advisory Group, this guide will be useful to anyone involved in designing, commissioning or delivering mental healthcare for young people.

Young people from migrant and refugee backgrounds commonly face a range of barriers to accessing services that are not experienced by Australian-born young people. These two documents were produced by the Centre for Multicultural Youth to assist commissioners and service providers to better support the mental health of these young people.

Engaging with young people who are experiencing mental ill-health is an important step in ensuring they receive the help they need. It can, however, be a challenging process and requires a considered but flexible approach. This guide provides evidence-based, practical advice on engagement for the wide range of health and welfare professionals who support young people with mental health needs.

This promising practice guide, developed by the Menzies School of Health Research, draws upon the learnings of these programs to suggest strategies for service providers, commissioners and policy-makers to improve the social and emotional wellbeing of young Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.

This tool will facilitate discussions between PHNs and their commissioned Youth Enhanced Services about what to include in their monitoring and evaluation framework.

Mental ill-health is the most common health issue affecting young people, with 75% of mental health issues having their onset before the age of 25 years. Whilst there are a range of evidence-based interventions and programs demonstrated to improve outcomes in young people with mental ill-health, it is a substantial challenge to implement them and maintain their quality in the ‘real world’. One way that we can improve the quality of mental health care provided to young people is to effectively make use of program evaluation.

This resource aims to propose a model of complexity which comprises of three domains (young person, workforce and service systems).

The YES Model mapping tool has been developed to help Youth Enhanced Services reflect on how their program operates and identify potential areas for improvement.

Building on previous resources and Orygen’s experience of working with PHNs and Youth Enhanced Services, this document provides guidance to PHNs and youth mental health services for designing, improving, modifying and reviewing their YES programs.