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There has been a significant growth in the employment of peer workers over the past decade in youth and adult mental health settings. Peer work in mental health services for older people is less developed, and there are no existing peer work models for specialist mental health services for older people in Australia. The authors developed and implemented a peer work model for older consumers and carers of a specialist mental health service. The purpose of this paper is to describe the model, outline the implementation barriers experienced and lesson learned and comment on the acceptability of the model from the perspective of stakeholders.

To ensure the development of the peer work model met the needs of key stakeholders, the authors adopted an evaluation process that occurred alongside the development of the model, informed by action research principles. To identify stakeholder preferences, implementation barriers and potential solutions, and gain insight into the acceptability and perceived effectiveness of the model, a range of methods were used, including focus groups with the peer workers, clinicians and steering committee, consumer and carer surveys, field notes and examination of project documentation.

While the model was overall well received by stakeholders, the authors experienced a range of challenges and implementation barriers, in particular around governance, integrating the model into existing systems, and initial resistance to peer work from clinical staff.

Older peer workers provide a valuable contribution to the mental health sector through the unique combination of lived experience and ageing. The authors recommend that models of care are developed prior to implementation so that there is clarity around governance, management, reporting lines and management of confidentiality issues.

The embedded researcher is a healthcare-academic partnership model in which the researcher is engaged as a core member of the healthcare organisation. While this model has potential to support evidence translation, there is a paucity of evidence in relation to the specific challenges and strengths of the model. The aim of this study was to map the barriers and enablers of the model from the perspective of embedded researchers in Australian healthcare settings, and compare the responses of embedded researchers with a primary healthcare versus a primary academic affiliation.

104 embedded researchers from Australian healthcare organisations completed an online survey. Both purposive and snowball sampling strategies were used to identify current and former embedded researchers. This paper reports on responses to the open-ended questions in relation to barriers and enablers of the role, the available support, and recommendations for change. Thematic analysis was used to describe and interpret the breadth and depth of responses and common themes.

Key barriers to being an embedded researcher in a public hospital included a lack of research infrastructure and funding in the healthcare organisation, a culture that does not value research, a lack of leadership and support to undertake research, limited access to mentoring and career progression and issues associated with having a dual affiliation. Key enablers included supportive colleagues and executive leaders, personal commitment to research and research collaboration including formal health-academic partnerships.

To support the embedded researcher model, broader system changes are required, including greater investment in research infrastructure and healthcare-academic partnerships with formal agreements. Significant changes are required, so that healthcare organisations appreciate the value of research and support both clinicians and researchers to engage in research that is important to their local population.

This is the first study to systematically investigate the enablers and challenges of the embedded researcher model.

The discrepancy between increasing demand and limited resources in public mental health is putting pressure on services to continuously review their practices and develop innovative models of care that redress this discrepancy. To ensure the service models continue to meet the needs of all stakeholders, children and young people’s mental health (CYPMH) conducts regular reviews of its service models. Accordingly, the youth mental health (YMH) model at CYPMH has evolved significantly over time in response to the needs of young people and service demand. The purpose of this paper is to outline the findings of a recent review of the YMH service, and the subsequent changes to the service model.

Informed by a participatory action philosophy, feedback was sought from staff on the service model through a range of methods including a questionnaire, staff consultations through a working party and interviews. This feedback was used to redesign the model, which was then evaluated again.

Staff identified a number of challenges with the service model and a range of service improvement solutions. The key issues included exceedingly high caseloads, workplace tensions, and fragmentation of the client journey. This paper outlines the primary solution to these key concerns, namely, the introduction of brief intervention (BI) as the entry point to the service.

BI approaches provide a solution to overly high caseloads as the direct and focussed approach of BI generally reduces the number of sessions people need. BI is an important addition to other treatment options and should be seen as a valid component of the continuum of mental healthcare.