“The lived experience needs to be embedded in everything we do. It is no longer acceptable to design and implement solutions without people who have direct experience of mental health issues”.
The challenges to improve mental health can seem overwhelming – from insufficient services to lack of integration and difficulty navigating services for consumers, carers and families. It is essential to take a system-wide approach to action, including at the service level.
How can we build a mental health system for the future?
Fragmentation, gaps and overlaps make it difficult for people to access the mental health services they need, when and where they need them. We need a coherent vision for how needs are identified, funded, provided, integrated, navigated and evaluated.
The detailed design must integrate with the system’s strategy and vision as it evolves with input from service users, their carers and families. Successful system and service design builds on what is working well and identifies what needs to change and how it needs to change.
System planning and design can help people access services
Monique Jackson, Principal
Our approach
Our people
Our work
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Mental health services need to be set up to deliver high-quality, person-centred care. There is pressing need to expand access to recovery-promoting in-community care, such as psychosocial supports, alcohol and other drug services, and housing and employment services.
We use service design principles to help achieve simpler, person-centred entry points to mental health services and supports, and better models of emergency care.
Service redesign and integration can deliver better care
Nous stands ready to help you reshape the mental health system through:
It is vital to collect the right data to understand, track and improve the outcomes that matter to consumers, carers and families.
We use our evaluation and data analysis expertise to improve governance and data collection to enable continuous quality improvement. We remove barriers to accessing, using and linking data to better enable the development of integrated care pathways and evidence-based models of care.
Monitoring and evaluation enables continuous improvement
Human-centred design and co-design ensures consumers, carers and families are at the heart of all system and service design.
We have experience co-designing consumer-oriented and recovery-focused models of care for emergency mental health care to reduce readmissions and the associated costs. We can achieve co-design in an efficient, effective and timely way that enables services to quickly improve outcomes.
Engagement and co-design with consumers, carers and families improves outcomes
Our WORK
Meet our team of mental health policy experts
Claire McCullagh
Principal
Claire is a human services, health and central government expert specialising in organisational and service design and policy development. She brings 12 years’ experience, including working previously as a senior adviser on central government policy, mental health and disability in the Western Australian (WA) Government.
Contact Nous Group to discuss how we can help your organisation reshape the mental health system.
Get in Touch
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Laura Porter
Principal
Laura combines a background in law and public health with more than 10 years of health and education consulting experience across Australia, the UK and now Canada. Laura specialises in healthcare strategy, policy, organisational reviews and evaluation, and change.
Monique has over 15 years’ experience in health and human services, with extensive experience in mental health strategy, evaluation, system and service design and organisational performance. She has led large mental health and alcohol and drug evaluations and a turnaround strategy for an underperforming mental health service.
Ian Thompson
Principal
Ian has 25 years of experience in Australian healthcare, ranging from operational management of hospital, community and mental health services to participation in national policy development. His mental health experience includes work on development and implementation of the National Mental Health Strategy, national mental health data...
Paul Eleftheriou
Principal
Paul has extensive experience across health administration, ranging from clinical governance and operations through to people management, higher education, clinical informatics, research and commercialisation, in the public and private sectors.
He has 10 years of experience as a health service executive, most recently as Chief Medical Officer at Western Health
Holly Norrie
Director
Holly has more than 15 years of experience in health, social policy and international development. She combines robust analysis with strong interpersonal skills to deliver excellent results for clients and their stakeholders.
Heidi Wilcoxon
Principal
Heidi brings over 20 years of international health experience in public, private and NFP environments, with expertise in public health and a background in psychology. She has experience running national health evaluations, organisational and health policy reviews and a deep understanding of patient experience, vulnerable...
Simone Schulz
Principal
Simone has extensive experience across health and human services. She brings an understanding of mental health policy, systems and services; including gaps and intersections at the health/human services interface. Her work focuses on large scale system/sector redesigns, organisational performance reviews, strategy and policy development...
Monique Jackson
Principal
Mental health and homelessness services need to work together
better. Here’s how.
Families are struggling with confusing mental health and disability systems. Here’s how we can do better
Contact us
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System planning and design
Engagement and co-design
Service redesign and integration
Monitoring and evaluation
Nous uses this person-centred model to conceptualise the system with the individual at the centre. This is a useful way to understand individual behaviour in a social context, and the dynamic relationship between factors at the individual, community, organisational and social levels.
The challenges to improve mental health can seem overwhelming – from insufficient services to lack of integration and difficulty navigating services for consumers, carers and families. It is essential to take a system-wide approach to action, which considers all levels of the system with the individual at the centre.
Mental health and homelessness services need to work together better. Here’s how.
Families are struggling with confusing mental health and disability systems. Here’s how we can do better
Our Approach
System planning
and design
Service redesign and integration
Engagement and
co-design
Monitoring and
evaluation
Beyond Blue’s The Way Back Support Service supports people who have attempted suicide, but its impact depends on referrals for people who need the service. Nous worked with Beyond Blue to improve the processes to record serious suicide risk and attempts at the emergency department (ED) of The Canberra Hospital to enhance referrals. We engaged with hospital management and ED staff, partnered with community organisations on patient interviews and analysed hospital presentation data. This led to an interactive dashboard to model suicide risk and hospital presentations that is being used by the hospital to improve referrals.
Supporting a hospital to better monitor suicide risk
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Nous used a program logic model to evaluate for the Australian Department of Health the implementation, impact, cost effectiveness and evidence base of two national psychosocial support programs for people living with severe mental illness. We collected qualitative data from literature and policy and undertook complex data analytics. We conducted trauma-informed interviews and focus groups with 800 government, client, carer and service provider stakeholders. Our evaluation informed decisions on the future of the programs and other psychosocial support services – particularly that design should be consumer- and outcomes-centred and work to reduce fragmentation in the mental health system.
Evaluating two national psychosocial support programs for people living with mental illness
Many older people access services from the health system and disability sector. Australia’s Department of Health engaged Nous to help it understand the experience of older people, their families and carers at the interface of the health and disability systems. We conducted interviews and focus groups with consumers, peak bodies, professional groups and service providers to identify needs and issues. From this we designed a consumer-needs framework and recommended ways to fill gaps.
Understanding the intersection of health and disability services for older people
How can a regulator effectively assess patient experience? That was the challenge Nous worked with the Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Health Care to solve. As part of our work to develop detailed technical specifications for patient experience, we identified best practice and reviewed a range of health practitioners to understand success factors and opportunities for improvement. The outcome was a set of recommendations that are helping to improve the quality of healthcare.
Measuring patient experience for a health regulator
Our People
Insight
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Here’s how university mental health services can rise to the challenge of surging demand
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Here’s how university mental health services can rise to the challenge of surging demand
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Where has Nous successfully applied this approach?
How do we reshape the system?
Explore system model
While the policy landscape is complex, recent reviews have highlighted consistent issues. The challenge is knowing what to prioritise and how to sustain the change to improve outcomes.
Norms
Practices
Structures
Families and communities:
the interpersonal relationships between individuals and the social networks that can influence behaviours, and the relationships between the built environment in neighbourhoods and communities.
Organisations and services:
the organisations and services that support people with complex mental health needs. These may be mental health-specific services, other health services, or social services such as housing or employment services. In Australia these can be delivered by the public, private or not-for-profit sector.
Social and policy environment:
broader society, including the laws and policies (or lack of policies). Actions that influence this level include advocacy and awareness-raising.
Individuals:
the characteristics of individuals that influence behaviour and risk factors, such as knowledge, attitudes, culture, values, gender age, economic status, goals and more.
Individual factors such as age, education, income, cultural background
Schools & workplaces
Family and community
Neighbour-hoods
Mental health services
Interpersonal relationships
Other health and social services and supports
Housing
State and Commonwealth agencies
Health, economic, education and social policies
Age, education, income, cultural background
Service providers need to consider the delivery of their services, with specific consideration to:
• Lived experience and peer workers are central to the community mental health workforce
• Wrap-around, holistic, integrated services,
and service navigation are essential to achieving positive outcomes.
Additive effects of each of the four levels and mutual interactions influences behaviours
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While the policy landscape is complex, recent reviews have highlighted consistent issues. The challenge is knowing what to prioritise and how to sustain the change over time to realise improved outcomes.
Learn more about Monique
Learn more about Monique
Learn more about Monique
Learn more about Monique
Contact Us
Contact Us
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Laura Porter
Principal