General News
22 February, 2022
One Red Tree puts mental health in the spotlight
A desperate need for mental health support in Ararat and Stawell is behind an inspiring new initiative to help vulnerable people in the community.
A desperate need for mental health support in Ararat and Stawell is behind an inspiring new initiative to help vulnerable people in the community.
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.
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.
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.
Ms McKinnis said she and Ms Meehan both recognised there was a lack of mental health support in the region over a decade ago.
“Ten or twelve years ago we started these conversations and we got to the point where we agreed we don’t have resources. I was completely overwhelmed, we’ve 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,” she said.
The first phase of the project was attracting psychology students to the area who are keen to complete their placement.
Ms McKinnis said the five provisional psychologists started work this month at Ararat College, Ararat 800, Stawell 502, Ararat West Primary School and Concongella Primary School.
“They will be fully registered psychologists but they won’t be a clinical psychologist because they have to do another two years under supervision.”
“They’ve already done a placement in a clinic in Ballarat, they’ve done five and a half years at uni already. They’re six to twelve months away from being fully registered.
“We’re going to give them lots of supervision from me as well as from Tammie,” Ms McKinnis said.
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.
“You can see preps coming to school and you can pick them, this kid needs support now so they’re not at this pointy end and that’s the whole point of this, early intervention,” she said.
Ms McKinnis said one encounter with a young boy reinforced to her the need to attract better support services to Ararat.
“One 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.
“He’s a kid you can easily see has a difficult time in life. I asked, how’s school going, and he said I can’t read, I’m dumb, there’s no point going to school and this is a nine year old kid.
“I thought, who’s going to help that kid. Helping isn’t just on an individual level, it’s on a community level. We need a community response for these kids,” she said.
Each participating school is contributing $10,000 towards the project.
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’s Mental Health Fund.
“We 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,” Ms Meehan said.
The One Red Tree Resource Centre is a collaboration which also includes Federation University Australia and Ararat Rural City.
“We’re starting with five schools, but realistically we could have ten next semester, we have schools begging for us to come to their school,” Ms Meehan said.
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.
“We are part of the community, we live in the community, we’re here, we’re not going anywhere and we want to deliver the help people need,” Ms McKinnis said.
The name One Red Tree was inspired by the children’s book The Red Tree by Shaun Tan which depicts paintings telling the story of depression and how a person can cope with it.