Youth and Family Participation

Youth and family participation is about creating genuine opportunities for young people, families, and carers to have a voice in the decisions that affect them. It involves listening to their experiences, perspectives, and ideas, and using this feedback to shape and improve our service.

Youth and family participation is important because the people using headspace services are best placed to tell us what is working well, and what needs to change.

By partnering with young people and families and valuing their lived experience, we can plan and deliver services that are more responsive, inclusive, and better equipped to meet the needs of the communities we support.

 

Learn more about youth and family participation below.

There are 3 different kinds of participation and they are equally important. Here's a brief run-down on what they are.

Participation in care planning and support

Participation at this level focuses on young people and families being included, respected and empowered as partners in decisions about their care, treatment and support.

 

Service co-design, delivery and improvement

This involves young people and families participating in consultations, focus groups, co-design activities and feedback processes to guide how we plan and deliver services. This could include input on opening hours, resources, programs, through to bigger projects and how the centre looks and feels.

 

Governance, leadership and strategic decision-making

This level of participation involves opportunities to feed into organisational policy, decisions and priorities. It can involve being part of the headspace consortium, project committees or specific consultation groups that contribute to the direction of services and how we provide support.

 

Youth Advisory Council

headspace Caloundra's Youth Advisory Council (YAC) is a group of passionate young people who meet regularly to give guidance and feedback, collaborate on events and campaigns, create social media content and help make sure young people's voices are being heard by the service. They have regular meetings and additional opportunities to join stuff on interview panels, at conferences, planning days and other cool projects. If you love leadership, advocating for mental health and hanging out with like-minded change-makers...YAC is for you! Find out more and apply here

 

Friends of headspace

Friends of headspace is a group of young people, parents, carers, friends and other community members who's input and voices help shape our local headspace services. You choose how you want to be involved and how often. Join a committee, attend our planning days, respond to a quick survey or have your say on the design of a resource. There's something for everyone!

Your ideas and input help us stay connected to what's important to our community, and ensure your needs and preferences are considered in how we plan and deliver our services. Keen to get involved? Click here to register your details.

 

headspace Caloundra Consortium

The headspace consortium acts as a 'committee' of youth services and stakeholders working together through a locally responsive platform to provide collaboration, strategic direction, partnership opportunities and resources to enhance the headspace service's capacity to meet local community needs. We meet 6x per year in person at headspace Caloundra and welcome expressions of interest from friends and family of young people who attend headspace. To find out more or express your interest, email participation@liveslivedwell.org.au.

 

Tell us about it

We welcome feedback, suggestions, compliments and complaints from young people, their friends and family.

Sharing your experience and ideas helps us to know what we're doing well, and how we can make improvements. This information goes to our leadership team and directly influences policies, procedures, and how we plan and deliver our services. You can remain anonymous and there are a number of ways to tell us what's on your mind:

 

Talk to your headspace supports

If you, a family member or support person want to know more about how you can be involved in your own journey at headspace, we're here to listen and share. Talk to your headspace clinician, peer support worker, the reception team or any other staff member. We can support you to learn more about your rights, how to get involved in YAC, how to give feedback or raise a concern, or simply guide you through all there is to know about headspace. You're part of our community. You, and your voice are valued here.

 

Young people, their families and carers have a wealth of knowledge from their lived experience, and they're often willing to share it to help support others.

We accept requests from external services and organisations who are seeking to hear from young people and their caregivers through consultations, focus groups, research activities, or other opportunities that would benefit from lived experience and youth perspectives.

Requests are reviewed through an internal triage process to ensure participation opportunities are meaningful, ethical and aligned with our service scope, values, and best-practice standards.

To learn more, and to request participation from the headspace community of young people and their caregivers, complete the request below.

Make a participation request

 

 

"At its core, youth and family participation recognises that better outcomes are achieved when services are designed and delivered with young people, families, and carers, rather than for them"