Northern CAMHS Country Advisory Meeting held in Woomera

health. There was strong interest from the health professionals in materials available on the internet including the Headroom website (http://www.headroom.net.au)  and the WCH website (http://www.wch.sa.gov.au). Woomera Hospital under the leadership of Henri Greenfield had collected a wide range of health promotion materials already and it was pleasing that CAMHS could provide additional resources.

The visit to this Region was especially noteworthy due to the fact that the Division of Mental Health had recently finalised a contract with Northern and Far Western Region to provide services to Roxby Downs and surrounding areas. The services will include both face to face visits and videoconferencing. The meeting in Woomera expressed a strong interest in teacher training and development at the local area school and as small working group has been formed as a result of our visit to examine how this can be best implemented. CAMHS Outreach Worker Margaret Collins agreed to a range of face to face in-service sessions for school personnel.

After our meeting in Woomera, we travelled to Andamooka, where we visited the local health professionals. It was also great to see more of the videoconferencing equipment installed as part of the Networking the Nation grant and to hear from professionals in these locations on how useful they found the technology. Professionals were particularly keen to access the  training and development sessions that were available from CAMHS.

Phil Robinson

Offspring Group

An Offspring group program commenced at the Marion Regional Team office.  Offspring is a program aimed at those young people living, or having a lot of contact with, a parent experiencing a mental illness.  Five young people attend fairly regularly and the group has made it a priority to design posters and flyers as a way of creating more interest and attracting new members.  The young people identified schools as a potential source and some thought is being given as to how schools, as well as other places, can be accessed whilst maintaining the confidentiality of the young people.

Group members expressed an interest in continuing with the group and sessions were planned until the end of 2001.  Southern CAMHS acknowledges the cooperation from Child

and Youth Health who kindly allowed us to hold Offspring in one of the group rooms at the Marion Centre.
The focus was on having fun together and developing a group project the children could work on for part of each session. 

A session was also planned so parents could have the opportunity to discuss their children and to comment on their child's response to the Offspring group.

Details of the group can be obtained from Carole Meech or Don Piro on 8298 7744.

Carole Meech
Marion Regional Team