Access to quality mental health remains a major challenge and need for many young Australians. In Melbourne’s North West, Orygen are committed to building a system that ensures timely and effective access for young people to get the mental health support they need, when they need it.
YLab and Orygen brought together an Associate team of 15 diverse young people with lived experience of mental ill health for a 12 month co-design project. The purpose of this project was to design solutions to barriers to young people’s access to mental health services in the North West of Melbourne.
We hired and trained 15 young people with lived experience of mental ill health in codesign skills to complete this work. This team of associates facilitated and participated in workshops with other young people and Orygen staff. They designed and implemented online and face-to-face community engagements to gather insights, ideate and prototype innovative methods and tools to increase access for young people to mental health services. These young people have led the design, trialing and iteration of these prototypes to then be scaled and implemented by Orygen. YLab and Orygen worked collaboratively, bringing the unlike-minded together to achieve our goals for this project