Service Coordination

Overview

Service coordination is one of the core program areas of Primary Care Partnerships. Its purpose is to achieve more consistent and streamlined health and community services so that consumers and carers experience a joined-up health and community service system working to identify and meet their needs more effectively.

HealthWest’s service coordination work is led by the HealthWest Service Coordination Implementation Group, which was formed in May 2008 when WestBay Alliance Service Coordination Implementation Group and Brimbank/Melton Local Service Coordination Implementation Group joined together. The group meets bi-monthly and its approach to making service coordination improvements in Melbourne’s west is guided by the Victorian Service Coordination Practice Manual. HealthWest also uses the Victorian Continuous Improvement Framework Manual to monitor and measure service coordination improvements and practice at both system and agency levels.

Objectives and Activities

  • Continue to support the implementation of service coordination principles by health and community organisations, agencies and local government.
  • Continue to provide guidelines for service alignment and consistency across the HealthWest catchment.
  • Continue to provide a forum for sharing ideas and discussing key issues.
  • Promote the Department of Health Service Coordination Survey that provides a monitoring and review framework for assessing the success of service coordination implementation.
  • Identify service coordination priorities for the HealthWest catchment based on tools such as the results of the Service Coordination Survey.
  • Promote Service Coordination principles and tools within organisations and across the wider HealthWest catchment.
  • Where appropriate and agreed, take on projects to progress and promote service coordination principles and tools across the catchment.

Walk in Our Shoes Event

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Walk in Our Shoes - Supporting clients to access the right services in the West was organised by the HealthWest Service Coordination Implementation Group and was attended by over 80 service providers and workers in the HealthWest catchment. The event on Thursday 14 October 2010 included an expo of health and community services as well as presentations on Responding to the needs Clients with Diabetes and Responding to the needs of Clients with Mental Illness. A highlight was hearing about the lived experience of Martin, who cares for his wife who has schizophrenia. It was great to see people taking the opportunity to increase their awareness and understanding of the client services available. Judging by the lively discussions taking place at the event and the positive evaluations, Walk in Our Shoes was a creative and useful means of supporting Service Coordination in the west. 

Service Coordination Projects

HeathWest works in partnership with our members on projects and initiatives to integrate service coordination across priority areas of health and wellbeing in Melbourne’s west. Projects include:

  • Refugee Health Service Coordination – which involves working with health and community organisations that work with refugee communities to improve service coordination, reduce duplication, increase understanding of referral pathways and build and formalise partnerships.
  • HACC Active Service Model (ASM) Project – supporting a consortia of ten Home And Community Care (HACC) funded organisations in the collaboration and development of shared principles, protocols and processes for ASM and an aligned agreed approach to ASM.
  • Community Mental Health Planning & Service Coordination Initiative (CMHP&SCI) - a project in the west that is aiming to broaden the platform of care and engagement with services for people aged 0-25 years who are risk of developing mental illness and to improve the service pathways for people aged 0-25 yeras who have an identified mental illness in Wyndham and Melton.