Sacred Heart College is hosting a forum for families to contribute to the Macedon Ranges Youth Mental Health Advocacy Process.

The purpose of the Youth Mental Health Advocacy, is to advocate for the establishment of a youth mental health service in the Macedon Ranges. We aim for this to offer a flexible and accessible range of support and specialist services in the areas of mental and physical health, work and study support as well as alcohol and other drug services.

Currently we are putting together a needs assessment. Majority of the data available is pre-covid or not broken down into municipal areas so we do not have a true capture of the issues and gaps in the Macedon Ranges. The purpose of hosting a community engagement session with the Sacred Heart Community is to capture this information.

We have heard from parents and young people formally and informally that there are not enough youth mental health services in the area, but we are needing to gather this information more formally.

The community engagement session is to understand the gaps in mental health support and intervention for young people, by consulting with young people and their parents.

The questions we will be asking will include:

• What is your experience in seeking help?
• Who do you turn to for help? home room teacher, coach, parents, friends.
• What are the barriers in seeking help? Stigma, access (appointments, costs), not close to home, not realising support is available and helpful.
• Where would a positive mental health support system look like?
• Where would you feel comfortable in going for support?

For the session we will place attendees into smaller groups to discuss, with parents and young people put in different groups to allow more open discussion. All information will be recorded anonymously. There will also be opportunity to answer these questions via an online format for those who do not feel comfortable sharing in a group setting.

The community engagement session also aims to de-stigmatise, and allow others to know they are not alone in their experiences when trying to access youth mental health services.

Please use the following link to book your attendance.  https://MRSC.sales.ticketsearch.com/sales/salesevent/132586