Rural Health examples
Sage Hill Carers' Service
Sage Hill Carers' Service provides support for carers of people living with a mental illness in the Warrnambool area of south-west Victoria.
In 1989 the Association for the Support of Psychiatric Services (ASPS) was established in Warrnambool after a public meeting identified the need for a service to support individuals with a mental illness and their carers. This need was also identified in a study of carers funded by the National Mental Health Funding Scheme and carried out by Lowndes and Harrison in 1993. The report also overwhelmingly identified a desperate need for a specific service to provide support for carers. In 1994 funding was received, again from the National Mental Health Funding Scheme, to set up Sage Hill Carers' Service.
Aims
Sage Hill aims to ensure that carers of people with a mental illness needing support and assistance are not turned away or referred to another service simply because their need is deemed "too difficult". Previous attempts to establish similar services resulted in those services providing direct assistance to the person with the mental illness, rather than the carer, despite being established to assist the carer. Sage Hill actually focuses on the needs of the carers and the carers feel that they can seek meaningful assistance for themselves.
What the Program does
While Sage Hill is aware of groups like Schizophrenia Fellowship and other groups which provide support for those with affective disorders like Huntington's chorea and Alzheimer's disease, these groups generally were metropolitan based with satellite groups in other centres. They do not provide comprehensive services for rural carers. Sage Hill works with existing services and groups. Establishing a group that would specifically cater for the varied needs of carers in the community is an innovative initiative. The service opened in January 1995 and by 1997 had 145 registered carer-clients. Sage Hill now has almost 650 registered clients.
What makes it successful
Peter McMahon, Coordinator of Sage Hill, believes the Program is successful because, "it encourages carer feedback and consults with carers on a regular basis, informally and formally. An example of this is the Sage Hill Carer Advisory Panel which is representative of our client group."
Peter adds, "Sage Hill also attempts to be responsive to carer needs by being flexible and creative in our responses."
Image: Brenda Harrison receiving a Schizophrenia Fellowship award at Monash University. Brenda is pictured here with a group of carers who were involved in the establishment of Sage Hill and are affectionately referred to as the "Tribal Elders"
Difficulties encountered
Peter says, "the transition from Commonwealth funding to state funding was a difficult process." He adds, "this is probably much to do with the Program's uniqueness of service, it's difficult to categorise."
Another difficulty "is the large rural area it services. The geographical isolation compounds the difficulty of obtaining peer support and supervision, leaving many to work as sole practitioners."
Funding sources
Initial funding was received from the National Mental Health Funding Scheme for the first two years. Recurrent funding is now received from the Department of Human Services (Victoria).
