Frankston North families access health and wellbeing services at the local school
Our Place Frankston North and site partners have worked with Peninsula Health to enable a health hub to be delivered on site 5 days a week.
Understanding and responding to the community’s needs
Consultation with community identified the need for Frankston North families to have easy access to health and wellbeing services.
As a priority activity, the Our Place Site Partnership Group (SPG) and Frankston North Education Plan (FNEP) worked alongside Peninsula Health to establish a permanent health hub at Aldercourt Primary School.
Spaces for services to be delivered at the local school
Aldercourt Primary School provided two permanent purpose-built consultation rooms to Peninsula Health, with one room allocated to providing allied health services and the other allocated to the Access Team on an ongoing basis. Peninsula Health has a team available on site 5 days a week from 8:30 am to 4:30 pm. Our Place is also working alongside the Peninsula Health access team to enable warm referrals to occur within on-site activities such as playgroup and adult craft groups.
Although the hub is located at Aldercourt Primary School, it is open to the whole Frankston North community. All community members and families who attend the Aldercourt Kindergarten, Mahogany Rise Child & Family Centre, Mahogany Rise Primary School and Monterey Secondary College can walk in and chat to Access team.
Providing walk-ins means families do not need to make an appointment to see the team and can pop in at any time and as many times as they wish. This flexibility also allows families to receive some initial information, go home and think about it, discuss it as a family, and come back to the team at any stage to ask questions or receive a referral.
Click here to view the Access Service brochure.
Service coordination based on the needs of the community
Being a first point of contact for enquiries and referrals, the Access team helps families navigate and be referred to the 50-plus services that are available across multiple Peninsula Health locations. The team will also be able to identify trends regarding community needs and can then work with the site partners to respond to these needs.
For example, there may be an increase in demand for dental services, in this case, Peninsula Health may then work alongside site partners to facilitate the delivery of a dental van on site.
Having the Access team on site and engaged with the SPG enables early years and school educators, wellbeing teams, playgroup facilitators, Maternal Child Health nurses, Our Place, and other on site professionals to be able to warmly refer families to Peninsula Health services.
An example of this could involve the school wellbeing team having a discussion with a family about their child’s developmental goals and then being able to walk the family down to the room where the access team is to have a face-to-face conversation about the services that can assist the family to help their child reach those goals.
Peninsula Health have also released an article entailing their involvement and what this means for the organisation HERE
Aligning with the Our Place Approach
This initiative aligns with the Our Place evidence-based element of wrap-around health and wellbeing services. This element is essential to the Our Place approach as the evidence tells us that having health and wellbeing services delivered within school settings supports and enables families to access effective health and wellbeing support services. It also enables warm referrals to occur, which also improves the likelihood of families engaging with such services.
Our Place’s role in supporting the implementation of the wrap-around health and wellbeing element often involves:
- Leading partnerships with service providers
- Engaging the community by providing activities and opportunities for connection
- Supporting service coordination based on the needs of the community
- Working alongside site partners to provide appropriate spaces for services to be delivered at the local school
- Consulting the community and collecting data to understand its needs
- Analysing data to inform the planning of priorities for the community