By Bronwyn Hastings

Ararat’s One Red Tree Resource Centre has joined with community stakeholders and Member for Wannon Dan Tehan in advocating for a standalone Headspace mental health and wellbeing facility in the rural city. 

One Red Tree provides on-location outreach services to 18 schools in Ararat district, and support for other health services and residents. 

The not-for-profit charity also provides training and placement opportunities for training psychologists.

One Red Tree co-chief executive Carly McKinnis said establishing Headspace at Ararat would complement the centre’s work with school-aged children.

“A Headspace that meets the needs of our local community would offer ongoing support and be something we can link in to,” she said.

“School connectedness is a huge factor in mental health, but we want to look at the wider context around our young people and engage them in sporting and community groups to give them a sense of belonging.”

Headspace, Australia’s National Youth Mental Health Foundation providing early intervention mental-health services to 12 to 25-year-olds, has centres at cities including Horsham, Swan Hill, Bendigo, Ballarat and Hamilton. 

“Working with Headspace, we could widen our services to support people from birth to death,” Ms McKinnis said. 

Federation University psychology program co-ordinator Megan Jenkins said the university’s partnership with One Red Tree provided psychology students with diverse, real-life training opportunities under high-quality clinical supervision.

“Our training model has been built with the needs of both the community and the future workforce in mind,” she said.

“Our unique approach has seen our clinical program expand from 16 to 163 students, the largest in Australia.

“It works so incredibly well because we’ve worked so closely together from the beginning to make sure everybody is getting what they need out of this service.”

Some Headspace advocates have intergenerational mental health experiences within the community, including immediate family who trained and worked at Aradale mental health facility, and have seen the progression of mental health services in the region.

Ararat Rural City Council Mayor Jo Armstrong said the value of having a community partnership model was paramount.

“The fact the model has been successful and has continued to grow at a steady and manageable rate has been important, to ensure the quality of training is maintained as well as the quality of the services being provided, that’s why the community believes in it,” she said.

Deputy Leader of the Opposition Sussan Ley toured Ararat with Mr Tehan.

She said regional health, particularly regional mental health, was especially challenging. 

“While we know there’s gaps across the system, those gaps are wide in regional areas,” she said. 

“So to have Dan fighting the fight for all of his communities when it comes to access to early intervention for mental health, particularly for young people, is really, really important.”

Highway delays

The tour also brought attention to the need for Western Highway duplication and the reduction of the East Grampians pipeline. 

Visiting a section of the highway following several fatal collisions, the most recent on March 8, Mr Tehan said there was no reason why the highway duplication could not be completed.

“The money is there. We want some transparency around it – the community wants answers,” he said.

Ms Ley said the duplication had not happened because it had been ‘bogged down’ in processes around cultural heritage.

“We will reform what we need to at Federal Government level so this can’t happen again,” she said.

“We expect the states to come on board. I don’t understand why Anthony Albanese, the previous transport minister, does not understand how important it is that it’s duplicated.”

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