Over the past four years The Sunrise Foundation in conjunction with our program partner, Orygen Youth Health Research Centre has been developing and delivering our purpose built HeadSmart program to year ten students across a range of schools in Melbourne. Importantly, in that time we have proven that our HeadSmart program works and as a result we’re ready to take a major step forward in the future development and rollout of the program.

In the past four years we have delivered the following key outcomes:

1. Delivered HeadSmart programs to 3 schools in Victoria.
2. 1835 year ten students have participated in HeadSmart programs.
3. 1185 students have been screened for risk of depression, anxiety, self-harm and suicide ideation.
4. 162 students have presented to school wellbeing teams after receiving the HeadSmart program.
5. 90 students identified at risk of depression, anxiety, self-harm or suicide ideation that until that time were not known to the school wellbeing teams or, who hadn’t previously sought help. These students received timely and appropriate care as required.

HeadSmart has exceeded many of the aims and objectives of the program. The success of the program will be highlighted in a publication, which has been accepted for an International Medical Journal in early 2010. The publication is further proof that HeadSmart works.

During this time the Sunrise Foundation has found it increasingly difficult to continue to develop and expand in order to match the growing need and increased demand for our program. Our most important objective has always been to make HeadSmart available to as many young people as quickly as possible. In order for us to deliver this outcome we needed to significantly increase our resources, our level of expertise and importantly our capacity to develop and deliver many more programs as soon as possible.

As a result, we have spent the past three months working closely with our program partner Orygen Youth Health to explore the benefits of integrating HeadSmart and after careful consideration we are excited to announce that The Sunrise Foundation and Orygen Youth Health Research Centre have agreed to form this exciting new alliance.

Orygen Youth Health (OYH) is Australia’s largest youth-focused mental health organisation. Orygen Youth Health is:

• A specialised youth mental health clinical service
• An internationally renowned youth mental health research centre &
• A youth mental health training and communications program

Click to go to the HeadSmart page at Orygen Youth Health

Orygen Youth Health is working to improve the mental health and wellbeing of young people. The key programs of OYH are:

• OYH Clinical Program - specialised treatment service for young people with mental health problems, including drug and alcohol issues, who live in the western and north western areas of Melbourne, Victoria.
• OYH Research Centre - comprehensive research program focused on developing improved treatments and models of care for young people with emerging mental disorders, including drug and alcohol issues.
• OYH Training & Communications - specialist youth mental health training/consultation service for practitioners from the clinical and community sectors working with young people. OYH-TC is responsible for community awareness programs and resource development.

Orygen Youth Health is also involved in a range of advocacy activities at the state, national and international levels in order to improve real-world clinical practice in mental health, to ensure that young people receive accessible, evidence based services and treatment.

Orygen Youth Health Core Values are:

1. Young people with mental health problems deserve individualised quality treatment, support and care.
2. Evidence based interventions for young people with mental health problems should be provided at the earliest possible opportunity.
3. Young people are partners in the recovery process; all views and opinions are respected.
4. Family members and/or other carers are recognised as integral to the health and wellbeing of a young person.
5. Young people's opinions and involvement enhances service development and provision.
6. A collaborative approach between care providers improves outcomes.

Integrating into Orygen Youth Health now provides HeadSmart with the necessary resources, expertise and capacity to deliver more programs to more young people sooner, not only in Victoria but importantly right around Australia. Orygen Youth Health is committed to the future direction of HeadSmart and we believe this new alliance provides us with a genuine opportunity to realise our vision.

Throughout the course of next year we will deliver HeadSmart programs to more than 900 year ten students across 4 schools in Melbourne and by the end of 2010 we will have engaged with more then 2750 year ten students across Victoria.

We have also begun to plan the next phase of delivery of HeadSmart programs beyond 2010. We have committed to identifying 5-10 additional schools across Victoria in the coming year that will receive HeadSmart programs in 2011 - 2012. This is a significant commitment, which has the potential to reach up to a further 6000 students aged between 14 – 16 years.

As part of the next phase of program roll out we are also seeking opportunities to increase and expand our research and evaluation of the program with one of the main aims being to develop, test and validate a universal screening tool which can then be applied in any school around the country. There is no such tool currently in Australia.

Our success to date has been a direct result of the wonderful support we have received from so many committed people along the journey. The encouragement, support and inspiration we have received in the past four years has been remarkable and everybody involved with the Sunrise Foundation will be eternally grateful.

Finally the board of the Sunrise Foundation would also like to acknowledge the Executive Director of Orygen Youth Health Research Centre, Professor Patrick McGorry, who was recently awarded the Australian of the Year Award in recognition of his tireless work in the area of youth mental health over many years. Pat has played a key role in helping to create and ensure the success of HeadSmart over the past four years and we look forward to working closely with Pat and his team at Orygen Youth Health Research Centre in the coming years.

Yours sincerely,

Wayne Schwass
Founder & Executive Patron
The Sunrise Foundation