Regional expansion

Project Sihat –Shepparton and Mildura

We continued into our second year of partnerships in regional Victoria with Project Sihat expanding mental health services during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The two bicultural psychosocial case workers continued in Shepparton and Mildura with Uniting VicTas and CatholicCare respectively providing care to 20 to 30 clients at any time. The aim of this partnership and caseworker support has been to provide referrals, information, practical support and emotional support to people seeking asylum, undocumented migrants and temporary visa holders with vulnerabilities, to assist with maintaining and improving mental health. A mental health clinician was available from the Hub in Melbourne to provide more intensive counselling support to clients when required and the Mental Health Team Leader has provided mental health supervision to the case workers. The Psychiatry Medical Director has also provided mental health advice and support via primary and secondary consultations.

Clinic Sihat –Shepparton

Clinic Sihat opened in Shepparton in June 2021 in partnership with Primary Care Connect (PCC), the local community health service.

The aim of the clinic was to provide weekly GP and practice nurse services to people seeking asylum (particularly those without Medicare or income) and newly arrived refugees. This assisted the PCC refugee health team with access to GP care and both teams worked together to support clients with complex health, mental health and psychosocial support needs. We have had a pro bono GP from Euroa and GPs from our Melbourne service supporting this work. It has been difficult to recruit to the practice nurse position due to the workforce shortage in regional areas along with the impacts of COVID-19 on nurses. Therefore, we supported the service with a practice nurse travelling up from Brunswick. Due to these workforce challenges, we also chose not to promote the service as widely as first anticipated. As a result, we provided ongoing care to 30 people seeking asylum throughout the year (all with no Medicare), conducting refugee health assessments, managing chronic diseases, referring people for dental and optometry checks, to City of Greater Shepparton for catch-up immunisations, to PCC for allied health services and torture and trauma counselling, to Project Sihat for psychosocial support, to our pharmacy waiver program for assistance with payment of medications and to specialists in tertiary services.