Supporting the health and wellbeing of the Frankston North community
Facilitating the provision of allied health services and information sessions on site at Frankston North is helping to support families to access the services and information they need.
In 2020, and based on community needs, the Our Place Frankston North Site Partnership Group (SPG) agreed that there was a need for allied health services such as speech pathology, counselling, occupational therapy and dentistry to be available for families on site. Our Place, playing the role as ‘the glue’, facilitated discussions with Peninsula Health to learn about their services and explore options for having some services delivered on site to meet community needs. Our Place and Peninsula Health worked together to enable this to happen.
Our Place worked with Peninsula Health to ensure that the consulting rooms were fit for purpose and met the needs of the practitioners. Our Place also assisted with promoting the services to the community and liaised with school and early learning staff to ensure they were aware of the services and knew how to refer families. Unfortunately, once the services began to be operational, families could only attend appointments for a short time due to the introduction of COVID restrictions.
Fast forward to today, and with the easing of COVID restrictions, a large focus for the Our Place team has been to reinstate the allied health services on site. As COVID has caused many disruptions to the health care system, it has been difficult for services such as Peninsula Health to be able to re-establish outreach services. However, understanding the value and importance of having the services available in Frankston North, Peninsula Health has been working hard to have services return and has enabled a speech pathologist and a community counsellor to operate once again.
What is now known as the Peninsula Health Hub at Aldercourt Primary School will also have a full-time staff member from the Access team on site that will help connect families and children to a wide variety of on site and off site services. There are also plans for the return of the community dental program and for an occupational therapist to be on site weekly in the near future.
Aligning with the Our Place Approach
This is one example of the Our Place Element of Wrap-Around Health and Wellbeing Services in action. Children’s health and wellbeing – and the health and wellbeing of their families – are the foundation for their learning and academic achievement. Having health and wellbeing services on site supports educators and health professionals to work collaboratively, it can assist with families only needing to tell their story once and supports families to access and receive services in a coordinated, efficient and effective way. To learn more about Our Place’s five evidence-based elements Click Here
