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'Act-Belong - Commit' in Rural WA
Esperance Playgroup-club of the month
This year children in country towns like Kalgoorlie and Albany will have a new transportation option for getting to school. The device is controlled at the front and rear, runs on bio-fuel, and not only ensures that children will get to school on time, but is also designed to improve their physical and mental health. This ‘walking school bus’ (with its characteristic florescent vested front and rear carers) is just one of the initiatives implemented by Mentally Healthy WA to support mental wellbeing in WA.
Whilst people in regional communities are particularly vulnerable, it is a sobering fact that up to 22% of the adult population in Australia experience some form of mental health problem within any one year. It is anticipated that by 2016 mental disorders will be the second major disease burden for males and the leading burden for females, outranking cancer and heart disease.
Alarmed by this prospect and encouraged by the cutting edge work in mental health promotion undertaken by its Victorian Health Promotion agency counterpart, Healthway sought to promote positive mental health in WA by commissioning a scoping study to determine the kinds of message that might influence people in WA to take more responsibility for their mental health.
The study, undertaken by Prof Rob Donovan at the Centre for Behavioural Research in Cancer Control within Curtin University, recommended launching a major campaign to improve mental health in regional communities. To explore the feasibility of the initiative further, health research academic Dr Ray James was brought into the project to undertake an extensive consultation process.
When asked how he first approached finding a solution to the problem, Dr James acknowledged “We discussed the project with anyone who would eet with us!”
Together Prof Donovan and Dr James established the Mentally Healthy WA project which was designed not only to address areas of need, but also to measure the effectiveness of any mental health intervention program they implemented. They sought to measure the impact of the program across a range of rural communities that were both diverse and representative of WA’s mining, costal and farming regions. When questioned about the basis for selecting the participating communities, Dr James explained,
“We identified towns with around 30,000 people, to increase the critical mass needed for intervention and for research/evaluation of the project.”
Dr James organised a series of public consultations in each town. The consultations focussed on how a mental health promotion campaign, ‘Act- Belong-Commit’ might be able to work in partnership with programs that already existed within each community. The community partnership approach was designed to maximise the resources available in the community and increased the likelihood of the campaign’s sustainability beyond the research phase of the project.
The consultation process assisted with the development of the business plan identifying the level of support required to run the “Act-Belong-Commit” intervention campaign in each community for two years. They were quite taken aback by the high cost of doing things in rural areas and it was at this point that James and Donovan made approaches to numerous funding bodies to gauge whether they might be able to receive financial support for the project.
The merits of undertaking the initiative were well argued and Lotterywest, Healthway, WA Country Health Services and Pilbara Iron offered financial support. Lotterywest provided the $300,000 required to develop resource materials essential to the promotional campaign.
Financial support has allowed Mentally Healthy WA to employ one staff member in each town. The Mentally Healthy staff member works within their community and with a Management Group to organise community meetings, Action Plans, and resources for agencies and clubs to organise or co-host a wide range of events and activities. With some towns already experiencing turn over of staff and key stakeholders, Dr James stresses the need for flexible Action Plans that are able to take opportunities to do co-promotions as they arise.
“There is tremendous variation in the way the towns have responded to the campaign. In Karratha the team has done a lot of work with Pilbara Iron and the Lions FeNaCing Festival, the Save Animals from Euthanasia project, and the Karratha Youth Theatre; in Kalgoorlie the project has worked with Indigenous youth and the Freefall Theatre; in Northam volunteers and seniors; in Albany adults participating in fun runs and bike races.”
In Esperance the management group has focussed on getting people involved in their community. Together with the local newspaper they’ve profiled sporting or smaller service clubs struggling with membership. A club that benefited enormously from this approach was the Esperance Playgroup which had been trying to recruit new members. After having been featured in the newspaper they doubled the number of children participating in the playgroup and almost trebled their membership.
The success of this approach is not only measured statistically but also by impact, as the Esperance Playgroup Coordinator’s comment illustrates “ we loved the Club of the Month article as it was so positive and gave more meaning to the playgroup”.
Having a good concept in mind, doing the homework by establishing the need, getting community stakeholders on side and continually discussing ideas has been instrumental to the success of the Mentally Healthy WA. After having implemented the intervention for only one year, Mentally Healthy WA can already identify the impact the project has had on the six demonstration towns. Looking towards the future Dr James is, “talking to other groups about maintaining the act-belong-commit concept as part of their policy or practice…We need to find a home for this great program somewhere in WA.”