The Hub, Melbourne

Cabrini Asylum Seeker and Refugee Health Hub (the Hub)

During the past year, we witnessed an increase in individual and family distress due to the impacts of government policy and prolonged protection visa processing, exacerbated further by the impacts of COVID-19. This has resulted in increased destitution, homelessness, family violence and people requiring emergency food and material aid supports. Many clients’ physical and mental health deteriorated during this time and the team went beyond normal service delivery to reach out to clients via increased phone calls and telehealth consultations. The primary care nurses and mental health clinicians alone had almost 9000 episodes of phone consultations and care coordination activities to support clients.

There were 284 referrals received across all program areas. These figures include responding to the release of people seeking asylum and refugees who had been held in alternative places of detention (e.g. hotels), having been transferred from offshore detention (e.g. Manus Island, PNG, and Nauru) as part of the now repealed Medivac Legislation. We were able to respond swiftly to physical and mental health needs by reviewing previous detention health records, triaging urgent health issues, undertaking health assessments, providing ongoing medication, counselling, care coordination and making referrals where necessary. We worked collaboratively with settlement service providers, other community and tertiary health services and community-based agencies to support clients.

The partnership with Melbourne Health as a rotational site for the Specialist Training Program in Psychiatry has continued since February 2020 for psychiatry registrars. Registrars must apply and it is a highly sought-after rotation due to the specific nature of psychiatry work undertaken that is not found in any other service. Five trainees have been through the program on sixmonthly rotations, with supervision from our Psychiatry Medical Director and support from the mental health clinician team.

Not only have they had a unique experience in their training, working with people seeking asylum, but they have made a significant impact on the mental health of our clients that would otherwise not be possible with a mostly pro bono psychiatry workforce. This year the registrars had 94 face-to-face and 216 telehealth consultations.

Our Program for Refugee Immunisation, Monitoring and Education (PRIME) catch-up immunisation project slowed down during the peak waves of COVID-19 due to the limitations of having too many clients onsite, so the main focus was on children requiring their childhood vaccinations rather than adults, unless it was medically indicated for them. The project began to ramp up again in the second six months of the year. Since the project commenced in September 2018, 590 clients have been notified into the project for assessment. Of these, 455 clients were identified as requiring vaccinations, 454 have commenced and 386 (85%) have completed their full course.

Responding to COVID-19

Our COVID-19 immunisation work continued providing support to our culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) clients with key messaging in their languages, dispelling myths and misconceptions, for them to make informed choices and navigate access to COVID-19 vaccination clinics.

We reached almost 400 clients and assisted 90% of them to achieve at least two doses of the COVID-19 vaccine. To help improve access to COVID-19 immunisation for our clients in a supported, trusted environment we partnered with both the Department of Health (DH) and IPC Health via the C-19 Network to deliver three pop-up vaccination clinics onsite. Two clinics were held in October 2021 and one in February 2022, resulting in 118 clients being vaccinated. This ongoing work would not have been possible without the generous support of the Department of Families Fairness and Housing (DFFH) Victorian Government, through the Priority Response to Multicultural Communities during Coronavirus (PRMC) program funding and the DH PRIMECOVID immunisation funding.