Administrative health data is collected by all state jurisdictions in Australia. This data is an incredible resource for health researchers to understand rates and variation in a variety of health conditions and treatment methods (Department of Health 2023). However, accessing this data is a minefield (Fahridin et al 2024).

The Factors Affecting Community Treatment Orders Research Study (FACTORS) is a federally funded study on the rates of variation of Community Treatment Orders (CTOs) across Australia. As a part of this project, administrative health data was sought in four jurisdictions. This data took more than a year and over $50,000 to access. Each state had their own requirements and unexpected speedbumps to ensure data was not released in a way that would compromise the rights of people captured in this data. However, at times, these processes made data inaccessible to our research team.

This presentation addresses the barriers to accessing administrative data with the aim of sharing strategies for anyone thinking of doing a large study of this nature. We also ponder the ethical considerations associated with the barriers to accessing the data – noting both that data should be available to researchers and should be protected to prevent misuse or re-identification.

Introduction
Momentum Mental Health (formerly Toowoomba Clubhouse) is a not-for-profit community mental health service, operating since 1997, offering mental health support to people over the age of 16 years from Toowoomba, Qld with satellite sites in Warwick, Chinchilla and online.

In 2021, the organisation made a radical change to its service delivery model, moving from a drop-in mental health centre catering for acute mental illness, to mental health and wellbeing services working across the mental health continuum - from prevention to severe/persistent mental health.

We now require no referral and no diagnosis to access monthly over fifty free group and one-on-one coaching sessions.

Approach
Our framework is based on the “5 Ways to Wellbeing” and similar to the Te Whare Tapa Wha Indigenous model in New Zealand. These concepts work, not only on a person’s emotional and mental wellbeing, but also their physical, spiritual (sense of purpose), and social well-being.

Conclusion
This presentation shows how traditional delivery of mental health support can be transformed to become more holistic and inclusive, focussing on holistic wellbeing on instead of mental illness.

Whilst volunteers have been described in the prevailing literature as “…institutional agents…”, there exist wide-ranging issues regarding their use, and crucially as highlighted in the context of our case study, the very definition of volunteers. As a Supported Living Service provider for people with intellectual disability and diverse needs, our case study approaches this from the perspective of student volunteers. Added to the definitional issue are the relationships formed throughout the period of volunteering and the degree to which nonprofit service providers rely on volunteer resources to continue delivery of complex services. This single qualitative Australian case study seeks to respond to research questions relating to student volunteers and the ways in which they are perceived to add value or not to their organisation. Our research explores issues necessitating innovative approaches to student volunteer management within the confines of government policy, regulatory environments, and rising stakeholder expectations regarding their management. It further explores issues associated with attracting, maintaining, and developing volunteer resources and the leadership complexities involved in this process. The Volunteer Foundation Framework developed from our research, provides relevant guidance for effective volunteer management that drives strategic innovation linking volunteerism to positive individual and organisational outcomes.

Australia has been, and is still considered, a world leader in implementation of routine outcome measurement in mental health services. However, almost 20 years ago, Richard Lakeman wrote a paper called ‘Standardised routine outcome measurement: Potholes in the road to recovery”. In this paper he highlighted the risk of routine outcome measurement when what is measured is of no value or has no purpose to the person – that is – when the outcomes measured can’t be or is not used as a tool to explore and find common ground.

In this presentation we aim to discuss and highlight the key features of outcome measures that may support their use as a bridge to recovery-oriented practice rather than a pothole in the road. These key features have been gleaned through a series of studies developing, testing and examining user-experiences of the Recovery Assessment Scale: Domains and Stages (RAS-DS: www.ras-ds.net.au).

Some of the most important features include co-design of the tool; prioritising service user self-assessment; presenting the tool as an opportunity for collaboration rather than as an “administrative requirement”, collaborative reflection and discussion, and use of ‘results’ to inform collaborative recovery planning.

Engaging people with lived experience in academic publishing is vital to growing the consumer research workforce. Yet, in Australia, only around 5% of research in all disciplines involves people living with the condition being studied in any capacity (Zirnsak et al, 2024), and fewer still credit these people as authors (Brasier et al, 2024).

The Equally Well Consumer Resource project has resulted in a suite of publications that have included members of the co-design group – comprised of people living with mental and physical health concerns - as co-authors. This presentation reflects on the process of engaging consumers as authors on academic publications, ensuring their participation is not tokenistic.

Effective engagement with members of the co-design group in research publications involves trust from the co-design group and good faith from researchers. In this project, the co-design group raised concerns about the application of academic norms (e.g. PRISMA guidelines for systematic reviews) that did not meet their conceptualisation of what they wanted the papers to address. This proposed a challenge to researchers who were expected to create high quality publications that abided by academic norms. This presentation addresses these tensions and provides strategies for future co-authorship with mental health consumers.