A one-stop hub in the southeast
We’re excited to announce the development of a new Infant, Child and Family Health and Wellbeing (ICF H&W) Hub at Monash Health.
Located within the Cranbourne Integrated Care Centre, this new service will focus on supporting children aged 0-11 within Melbourne’s southeast facing developmental, emotional, and behavioural challenges. This new service will see mental health, community health, the Children’s program, and Windermere Family Support Service come together and develop an integrated interdisciplinary team.
Monash Health’s ICF H&W Hub is one of three being developed in Victoria as a direct recommendation from the Royal Commission into Victoria’s Mental Health System. They form part of a larger Victorian Government initiative designed to fill a crucial gap in our healthcare system by providing specialised care and intervention for children aged 0-11 with moderate to significant needs.
Supporting the ‘missing middle’
The “missing middle” represents children and families who require more than basic, short-term care but that without diagnosed conditions, may not meet the criteria for intensive or long-term support.
“The story of our very first Hub patient, ‘Jake’, offers a good insight into how the new Hub will bridge an important gap in the system,” said Elise Colgrave, Program Manager for the Infant, Child and Family Health and Wellbeing Hub.
“Jake is in Prep, and since starting school, there have been increasing concerns about his behaviour. The school is doing everything possible to support this child and his family, but he is currently sitting on long waiting lists. Without a clinical diagnosis, there wasn’t a lot of immediate support for the family and the issues continued to escalate. Jake has ended up in the Emergency Department several times this year and is at risk of not completing the school year.”
“The Hub can provide an immediate connection to interdisciplinary services to support families to navigate the complex systems their child needs. Our aim is that schools and other services will contact us early on, and we can connect the family to publicly funded medical, mental health and allied health services within our team or support them to connect to services in their community. As part of the Hub, we will devise a set of shared goals with the family, complete free assessments for various conditions, and provide early interventions that aim to prevent escalation.”
Help us co-design a new model of care
At the heart of the Hub is a focus on interdisciplinary integration and collaboration, and the development of the Model of Care (MoC) for this new service is no different.
Since March 2023, the team appointed to lead the co-design of the MoC, The ALIVE National Centre for Mental Health Research Translation at Melbourne University, has been working closely with schools, local GPs, community service providers and families to learn from the lived experience of those that will benefit from and interact with its services.
Now, they need your insights so that we capture the collective experience of our own teams in designing this service.
Get involved
We are calling on all paediatric clinicians and allied health specialists to share their views and experiences. We need paediatricians, paediatric nurses, occupational therapist, speech pathologists, psychologists, and psychiatrists to bring their perspective to the co-designed MoC.
Participation in a co-design session takes around one hour, and there is also the option to contribute to the project board virtually at a time that works for you.
Participants will get a unique opportunity to be involved in a transformational health project and to help shape the future of healthcare for children 0-11.
To get involved, email the co-design team by 21 June at alive-codesign@unimelb.edu.au, or contribute to the project board virtually by clicking here by Friday 30 June.
Approved by Andrew Block and Andrew Perta.