Review of Community Suicide Prevention Service
Status: Completed April 2023
Client Gold Coast PHN
Background
In 2020, Beacon Strategies worked with Wesley Mission Queensland and Gold Coast PHN to co-design a new service that would aim to support people in the community, address situational distress and contribute to suicide prevention outcomes.
Two years later, we were engaged to review the outcomes from the initial implementation period and provide recommendations to inform future commissioning in the context of ongoing service system changes and reforms.
What we did — our approach
To gain insights into the program and inform evidence-based recommendations, we completed:
situational analysis — review of key sector policies, funding agreements and local service mapping
analysis of program data to understand service user and utilisation trends
consultation with service users, program staff/management and local stakeholders.
These findings led to the development of an options paper and use of a prioritisation framework to consider potential scenarios. Finally, we produced a report and recommendations to guide Gold Coast PHN with future commissioning.
What we achieved — our impact
The outcomes of this project include:
strengthened service model that aims to ensure people not in contact with mental health services who experience challenging life events and situational distress can obtain support within their local community
identifying other potential areas of unmet need for community-based support focused on situational distress
greater alignment with other activities in the Gold Coast Suicide Prevention Community Action Plan, such as up-skilling local communities to recognise and respond to those in distress.
You can read more about some of the insights we captured through this project in our blog post titled Developing service models that address the drivers of situational distress.
As a mission-based health and social services consultancy, Beacon Strategies is committed to partnering with Primary Health Networks (PHNs) to better plan, design, implement and evaluate their work in delivering on their mission and purpose. Read more about the support we offer PHNs here.