We are pleased to share our sixth bulletin update on the progress of the Crisis & Emergency Response Reform Project.

We continue to advance through our phase 3 (service design) activities, with our current focus on engagement activities. A big thank you to all the participants thus far who are bringing their expertise and experience to inform the future service system.

Project activities in the past fortnight

Workshop Series

After completing our Service Design Validation workshop — where we validated findings from our earlier system design workshops — we held a series of Service Design Define workshops with the Department of Health.

These workshops aimed to test our emerging service design findings and insights, drawn from desktop research and sector engagement to date. This supported the development of Briefing Papers for our design workshops.

Service Design Workshops

Over the past fortnight, we’ve been pleased to commence our Service Design engagement series. So far, we’ve conducted three workshops, with the remaining nine scheduled for completion by 6 June.

Workshops will be grouped by service model, to allow for deep engagement and thinking in connection to the functions, workforce, and integration options for each of the following:

• Clinical Assistance
• Telehealth
• Outreach
• Stabilisation
• Safe spaces

Throughout this engagement period, we will continue to seek a broad range of perspectives to inform service design. This includes ongoing engagement of:

• Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander organisations and service users
• People with lived and living experience, including consumers, families, carers and supporters
• Partners in reform, including Government partners and peak bodies
• Service providers delivering mental health services across inner metro, outer metro, and regional Victoria

Next steps

As the Service Design workshops continue, we are undertaking real-time synthesis and analysis to ensure all voices are meaningfully captured and embedded in the design process. Once the workshops conclude, we willconsolidate insights from all research and engagement activities to inform the finalisation of the five new or redesigned crisis service designs and the future service system design.