950 young people in need supported via our free counseling services in 2011!
Youth Focus has been busy during the first quarter of 2012, accepting approximately 240 referrals from youth in need. We are glad that we can be seeing as many young Western Australians as possible to assist them with the issues associated with suicide ideation, depression and self harm.
The Family Counselling program continues to grow with the team well and truly established. Although being based at our Burswood office, a family counsellor is also building up a caseload in the Rockingham/Kwinana area and provides counselling there one Friday morning per fortnight. This provides a counselling service to families in the Rockingham/Kwinana area that may not have the means or ability to travel to Perth, but would still benefit from seeing a Family Counsellor. Sessions are unlimited with families able to see our counsellor for as long as they require or until they are assessed as not requiring the service any longer.
As Youth Focus is an early intervention service, we provide two intake sessions using a solution focused therapy approach. We are currently undertaking research to determine the effectiveness and sustainability of the intake process. We aim to present this research at the Seventh World Conference on the Promotion of Mental Health (Mental Health and Wellbeing of Young People) on the 17th to 19th October 2012. Previous research on the intake process conducted in 2010 revealed that a significant percentage of clients reported having their needs met by our intake process. Continuing to provide this support for young people, Youth Focus aims to determine if young people are still experiencing these benefits and how we can further improve.
