Is headspace making a difference to young people’s lives?

Appendix B
of achieving more efficient and equitable mental health service delivery for young people across
Australia.
Limitations
This analysis contains a number of limitations which should be considered when evaluating results.
These relate to assumptions made in the evaluation and data limitations.
A number of assumptions were made in the analysis, and the results of the evaluation should be
interpreted in light of this. Firstly, the evaluation team was unable to take into account competing
and complementary mental health services such as acute child and adolescent mental health
services. These additional mental health services are likely to impact on the service requirements of
headspace centres. These factors need to be considered in future centre allocation, but are beyond
the scope of this analysis. A second assumption relates to the definition of access. Access was
defined by geographical proximity and centre capacity alone. Additional factors may impact on youth
access to service, but these were not explored in detail. Finally, the evaluation team were unable to
account for changes in demand and spill-over effects with a large number of additional centres in
relatively close proximity.
There are a number of limitations of the data. Population estimates are based on 2011 Census data.
There is likely to be some migration into and out of small areas. This will impact on estimates of
population access. In addition, these changes are likely to impact on the demographic profiles of
small areas and therefore small area estimates of mental health need. In addition, the reader should
be cognisant of errors associated with modelling, including small area estimates of population mental
health prevalence. Further, variables which are relevant to needs in the community were unable to be
included in modelling as included variables are limited to those collected in the Census.
The evaluation team were unable to cost alternative models and methods of service delivery that
are outlined in the chapter. This is due to a lack of information to allow costing of alternatives, and in
particular, the cost of alternatives to physical centres and full-time models of service delivery.
Finally, the modelling did not take into account economies of scale. For example, savings in the hNO
administration associated with expansion beyond the current centre allocation and economies of
scale which may be associated with larger headspace centres in high need urban areas. In addition,
the evaluation team were unable to evaluate factors such as greater clinical staff salaries in remote
locations with small service populations.
Overall outcomes of investigation into the headspace centre allocation models
This section of the headspace evaluation has provided an analysis of centre expansion under the
current model of headspace centre allocation, examined the effectiveness of the current model of
centre allocation to provide youth access to services, and discussed alternative methods of achieving
national coverage for headspace services. This has been completed in order to address the following
two evaluation components:
• Assessment of the overall cost-effectiveness of expanding headspace beyond 100 centres;
and
• Estimation of the maximum funding requirements for headspace to achieve national
coverage.
We remind readers that these components build on the preceding cost effectiveness section. In
addressing both evaluation components shown above, the evaluation team used the following
methodological and design features:
• The analyses considered the costs and effects of headspace services in different
geographical locations and the current geographic and demographic coverage of
headspace.
• The main metric used in considering the effects of headspace expansion was current and
potential youth coverage of headspace.
• We estimated the costs of national coverage using the current Departmental costing
mechanisms for the establishment of headspace sites based on headspace grant funds and
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