A desperate need for mental health support in Ararat and Stawell is behind an inspiring new initiative to help vulnerable people in the community.<\/p>\n
The One Red Tree Resource Centre is a not-for-profit initiative that aims to provide high quality mental health services and training, based in Ararat.<\/p>\n
The One Red Tree Resource Centre is the brainchild of local clinical psychologist Carly McKinnis and education leader Tammie Meehan, and will initially place a trained psychologist in five local schools for two days a week.<\/p>\n
Based in premises donated by Ararat Rural City Council at the Ararat Railway Station, the project hopes to overcome the chronic shortage of mental health practitioners in the region, while providing accessible and affordable mental health services.<\/p>\n
Ms McKinnis said she and Ms Meehan both recognised there was a lack of mental health support in the region over a decade ago.<\/p>\n
\u201cTen or twelve years ago we started these conversations and we got to the point where we agreed we don\u2019t have resources. I was completely overwhelmed, we\u2019ve had a number of suicides in the community that have impacted on me personally and professionally and then seeing what kids were going through in COVID, the impact on the whole community and no resources,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
The first phase of the project was attracting psychology students to the area who are keen to complete their placement.<\/p>\n
Ms McKinnis said the five provisional psychologists started work this month at Ararat College, \u00a0Ararat 800, Stawell 502, Ararat West Primary School and Concongella Primary School.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey will be fully registered psychologists but they won\u2019t be a clinical psychologist because they have to do another two years under supervision.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019ve already done a placement in a clinic in Ballarat, they\u2019ve done five and a half years at uni already. They\u2019re six to twelve months away from being fully registered.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re going to give them lots of supervision from me as well as from Tammie,\u201d Ms McKinnis said.<\/p>\n
Ms Meehan is currently on leave from her job as Assistant Principal at Stawell 502, and said she is passionate about getting help for kids struggling to cope.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou can see preps coming to school and you can pick them, this kid needs support now so they\u2019re not at this pointy end and that\u2019s the whole point of this, early intervention,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Ms McKinnis said one encounter with a young boy reinforced to her the need to attract better support services to Ararat.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne of the things that really stood out for me was when I saw one child who I sat down with in the park one day and I shared my hot chips with him.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s a kid you can easily see has a difficult time in life. I asked, how\u2019s school going, and he said I can\u2019t read, I\u2019m dumb, there\u2019s no point going to school and this is a nine year old kid.<\/p>\n
\u201cI thought, who\u2019s going to help that kid. Helping isn\u2019t just on an individual level, it\u2019s on a community level. We need a community response for these kids,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Each participating school is contributing $10,000 towards the project.<\/p>\n
The One Red Tree Resource Centre is also in the process of investigating streams of state and federal funding. They are also looking at accessing some funding through the Education Department\u2019s Mental Health Fund.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe want this to be sustainable for many, many years and we think we have a sound business model where it will end up paying for itself, but we need a few good years to get that start up,\u201d Ms Meehan said.<\/p>\n
The One Red Tree Resource Centre is a collaboration which also includes Federation University Australia and Ararat Rural City.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re starting with five schools, but realistically we could have ten next semester, we have schools begging for us to come to their school,\u201d Ms Meehan said.<\/p>\n
While initially One Red Tree services are earmarked for five schools, services could be extended in the future to aged care services, anti natal maternal child health and employers.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are part of the community, we live in the community, we\u2019re here, we\u2019re not going anywhere and we want to deliver the help people need,\u201d Ms McKinnis said.<\/p>\n
The name One Red Tree was inspired by the children\u2019s book The Red Tree by Shaun Tan which depicts paintings telling the story of depression and how a person can cope with it.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A desperate need for mental health support in Ararat and Stawell is behind an inspiring new initiative to help vulnerable people in the community.<\/p>\n
The One Red Tree Resource Centre is a not-for-profit initiative that aims to provide high quality mental health services and training, based in Ararat.<\/p>\n
The One Red Tree Resource Centre is the brainchild of local clinical psychologist Carly McKinnis and education leader Tammie Meehan, and will initially place a trained psychologist in five local schools for two days a week.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":698,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"none","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"coauthors":[31],"class_list":["post-710","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/theadvocate.net.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/IMG_6780-1.jpg?fit=1920%2C1280&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pdqUu4-bs","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theadvocate.net.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/710","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theadvocate.net.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theadvocate.net.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theadvocate.net.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theadvocate.net.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=710"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/theadvocate.net.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/710\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theadvocate.net.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/698"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theadvocate.net.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=710"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theadvocate.net.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=710"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theadvocate.net.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=710"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theadvocate.net.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=710"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}