Mental Health Respite Program – National Respite Development Fund

CLOCk – (Contributing Lasting Outcomes for Carers)

Peninsula Support Services (PSS) in partnership with Alfred Health (Commonwealth Respite & Carelink Centre Southern Region), Reach Out Mental Health (Southern Mental Health Association), Impact Support Services and Grow (Victoria) provide flexible respite care options for carers and families caring for people with a severe mental illness/psychiatric disability and for people with an intellectual disability. The Mental Health Respite Program – National Respite Development Fund is supported and funded by the Australian Government – Department of Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs (FaHCSIA).

As lead agency, PSS work's collaboratively to deliver the program CLOCk– (Contributing to Lasting Outcomes for Carers) which has been designed in recognition of the fact that families and carers in the Southern Metropolitan Region (& particularly in the Mornington Peninsula Shire and Frankston City) may not be accessing the services they require. The objective of the CLOCk project is to provide an integrated, user-friendly service system of enhanced respite and support options through collaborative service partnerships, to families and carers by:

• Providing Carer Support Workers linked directly to the PDRSS component of the mental health system across the Mornington Peninsula Shire, Frankston City and Bayside regions to the Southern Metropolitan HACC region. The Carer Support workers divide their time between Mornington Peninsula (located at PSS), Frankston City (located at Impact) and Bayside (located at Reach Out) and achkowledge and promote the carer's role within the "recovery" process.

• Providing a transport co-ordinator who will create a “community transport service model.” Through this model, community volunteers would be trained to transport carers and/or care recipients to services across the region.   The transport co-ordinator is based at PSS on the Mornington Peninsula where there is a chronic and severe lack of transport options.  The co-ordinator will arrange transport for carers and care recipients who live in the Mornington Peninsula and Frankston area and need to travel across the Southern Metropolitan region to access respite and other support services.

This program demonstrates great support and commitment by the government by allow us to increase access to respite for mental health carers in a flexible and responsive manner. It recognises the important and difficult, but often overlooked, role that carers have in providing support every day to friends or family members with a mental illness. The funding is provided until 30^th June 2011.