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

3. Access and Engagement with Centres
Wide range of services
A number of headspace staff and service providers felt that providing a wide range of services
through the sites broadened headspace’s appeal because this helped to detract from the mental
health focus of the service, which could be stigmatising for young people. Consequently, the
provision of additional, non-mental health-related support services was considered important for
enabling young people to visit and become familiar with headspace in a non-stigmatising context.
Whilst there’s still the stigma there, we’ve gone a long way at kind of conveying to people that
this is a place where you can get help for all kinds of different things (Psychologist)
Innovative modes of engagement
Several staff members spoke of how innovative modes of engagement also heightened headspace’s
appeal to young people. Involvement in community events, visiting schools and music events were
seen as crucial for raising community awareness of headspace and for promoting the service to
young people. The wide range of youth-friendly events organised by the sites clearly facilitated young
people’s engagement with and awareness of the service:
They sometimes have – I haven’t been to them, but they have skating events, gaming events
and the ones I’ve been to were mainly music events where my friends singing, or playing
guitars or something, so I went along to support them. (Male, 18 years)
The adoption of information and communication technology, such as free Wi-Fi, iPads, and the use of
social media including Facebook, was also noted by some as important for engaging young people.
Other less frequently noted factors that staff and service providers considered important for
broadening headspace’s appeal to young people included: flexibility with appointments, extended
opening hours, a focus on quick response, group support (e.g. drumming, drama groups), reminder
calls about appointments, follow-up calls to check up on young people, consultation with the Youth
Reference Group concerning headspace promotional material, no geographical boundaries, no need
for a referral and high quality service.
Factors that hinder engagement
While stakeholders were largely overwhelmingly positive about headspace’s accessibility, they
also identified a range of factors that may hinder young people’s access to and engagement with
headspace.
Distance from a centre
The economic evaluation of headspace, which included an analysis of centre expansion models,
determined a strong relationship between the use of headspace services and the distance of a
centre from a clients’ home. The full analysis (reported in Appendix B) shows that there was a rapid
decline in the probability of young people accessing services as the distance to a headspace centre
increased. In addition, there was a correlation between knowledge of headspace and proximity to
a headspace centre. Again, with increasing distance there was a substantial decline in knowledge
of headspace services. As shown in Figure 3.10, the majority of headspace clients live within 10
kilometres of a centre.
Social Policy Research Centre 2015
headspace Evaluation Final Report
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