News & Events: Media Releases

National award for Joondalup Health Campus mental health unit

20 October 2010

Joondalup Health Campus was the winner of the 2010 APHA/Baxter Award for Quality and Excellence - Ambulatory Care Award for their innovative Family Friendly Initiative in the mental health unit.

Staff from the mental health unit have taken a leading role in ensuring the unit is set up to support and enable parents to continue their parenting role while receiving treatment as an inpatient. Traditionally, children were not included in the care plan for parents receiving inpatient treatment for mental illness.

Joondalup Health Campus mental health staff development nurse Dani Barnes and Children of Mentally Ill Consumers convener Margaret Cook initially dreamt up the program after Margaret’s experience living with a parent of a mental illness.

“Living with a mental illness as a parent with two young children I knew what this was like for them as I too was born to a mother with mental illness back in the 1940’s.  Nothing had changed in the system to help children or help parents to care for their children whilst they were parenting with mental illness,” she said.

“The inpatient unit has exceeded in providing a family friendly space and services for consumers, parents, families who are admitted as patients. Consumers were engaged at every stage of this development.” 

The unit provides support for the patients and their visiting children and guests. The unit boasts family visiting rooms in open and secure environments, toys, books and courtyard with play panels.

The Family Friendly Initiative has enabled the patients at the Joondalup Health Campus to better understand the importance of continuing their parenting role despite their mental illness.

Australian Private Hospitals Association chief executive officer Michael Roff said the program was a positive move for parents with mental illnesses.

“It is difficult to be a parent at the best of times, but if a patient is receiving treatment for mental illness, it can be near impossible,” he said.

“This innovative program at Joondalup Health Campus is leading the way in helping patients meet the challenges of parenting with mental illness.”

Children of parents with a mental illness are two to three times more likely to experience significant social, emotional, behavioural and mental health disorders during childhood, adolescence and adulthood. This is often related to the psychosocial consequences of mental illness, such as stigma, social isolation and relationship breakdown, rather than the symptoms of the illness itself.

The Joondalup Health Campus program gives children clear, age-appropriate information that explains mental illness and provides activities and family friendly areas that are non-clinical so that families can spend time together while the parent is an inpatient.

The aim of this award, which was presented in October at the Hilton Sydney, is to recognize private hospital facilities nationally that have excelled in the provision of clinical treatment and demonstrated excellence in patient care in an ambulatory care setting. 

The Joondalup Health Campus mental health unit is a 42-bed unit which provides comprehensive mental health inpatient care to adults.