March 27, 2014
The South Burnett’s new Partners In Recovery (PIR) program, which aims to support people with mental illness, was officially launched this evening in Kingaroy.
The support service will work to link people, their carers and families with the many different services in the local community that can provide support.
It will be delivered by a consortium of local health and welfare agencies, headed up by Lifeline Darling Downs, and including Centacare, RHealth, Rural & Remote Mental Health Ltd, MIFQ, Medicare Local and the Queensland Alliance For Mental Health.
Dr Jennifer Bowers, the CEO of the Australasian Centre for Rural and Remote Mental Health, travelled from Western Australia to attend the launch, which was held at St Mary’s Hall.
She thanked local welfare organisations, Member for Nanango Deb Frecklington and the South Burnett Regional Council for supporting PIR’s work.
Mrs Frecklington, who performed the official opening, praised the PIR program and told guests the low level of mental health services in the region was the main reason she had become involved in politics.
“Six years ago I was sitting in my office reading the Courier-Mail and they had a map showing how mental health funds were spent across the State,” she said.
“The South Burnett had such a low level of funding that we didn’t show up at all and I asked myself why not?”
Mrs Frecklington said she and her husband had a strong interest in mental health.
The couple had lost a good friend who took his life after he succumbed to depression.
The seven years the couple spent managing a property in drought times had also shown them at first-hand what devastating effects hard times can have on small rural communities.
The PIR program aims to provide early intervention and prevention strategies to help avoid clients being moved to the over-stretched tertiary mental health care system.
The Darling Downs and South West Qld PIR area – which covers the South Burnett – stretches across 23 per cent of the State.
Facilitators are located in Charleville, Chinchilla, Roma, St George and Tara. There are also six in Toowoomba including a roving facilitator covering Pittsworth and Milmerran.
There are two facilitators in the South Burnett: Andrea McGee, who is based in Kingaroy, and Lesley Dennien in Proston.
PIR has funding to assist 296 people by the end of the three-year program.
Tim Saal, the local co-ordinator of the Darling Downs and South West Qld PIR, said “capacity and growth” had been above expectations for the new program so facilitators were already extremely busy.
Over the longer term, one of the program’s aims is to look at the reasons why people are “falling through the cracks” of current mental health services system and see if processes can be improved.
- Related article: Helping Hand To Build Support Networks
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