Anne Ruston (SA, Liberal Party, Minister for Families and Social Services) Share this | Hansard source

I thank Senator Chandler for her question about a matter that is very important and facing a lot of young Australians—that is, those who are suffering with mental illness. The government is absolutely focused on ways of removing barriers to employment, and one of those is by investigating new and innovative ways that we can improve outcomes for those people who are unemployed. We know that the onset of mental illness, when it occurs in adolescents and young adults, can often be a significant barrier to young people being able to get into the workforce, and it leads to some very poor employment outcomes for those people. We know how important it is to help young people to overcome those barriers to work, because getting people into work gives them a sense of identity and purpose and provides them with a sense of direction and achievement. This is especially true for young Australians.

One of the programs that we are currently working on is the Individual Placement and Support trial. It's a tailored approach that co-locates employment services and employment incentives at the same places where people are able to receive mental health services through the work of headspace. The original IPS model was developed for adults, but in 2015 the decision was made to trial it with young people to see whether young people under the age of 25 could benefit from a similar type of wraparound service. We originally set up 14 sites in co-location with headspace, and this year we've added more funding to extend the trials out to 24 sites across the country. What makes this model so different and so successful is the fact that it actually embeds the employment specialist alongside the healthcare worker to make sure that the young people are getting the wraparound services that they need to ensure that they have successful employment outcomes into the future.